Ruth, on the Purity, or Impurity, of Attention
by Megan McDermott
“Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, ‘…I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Mahlon, to be my wife, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance….’” – Ruth 4:9-10 (NRSV)
When Mahlon was alive,
I gave him his due, but not
what people give each other today.
That’s not how we thought,
marriage a matter of getting things done,
though the To-Do list never
shortened much: those babies
never born – our emptiness
like a tree that grew, year
by year, closer to the quiet God
in the sky who stayed unmoved
by our efforts.
At his deathbed, I said goodbye,
to him and the List of What Was Unachieved.
What was my point? Oh, attention,
affections, purity. They come
unbidden and unburdened
when there’s no list of what
you’re meant to produce. With Naomi,
there was no way to fall short,
no expectation of what I should
or could have given. I was free –
to give nothing or everything.
So I gave everything.
Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Western Massachusetts. Her first full-length poetry collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, came out last year through Fernwood Press. She is also the author of chapbooks Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press).
