By the ancestral well tucked
in the forest deep, that place
where the innocent were slain,
history shuffles toward truth.
Birds above our heads today
sit on the wild branches of old,
speaking of the earliest cultures
now gone that we come to weep.
This well taught us how to live,
sing, dance, and mourn. With every
drink it gave the earth, the sky,
the sun, the moon became the sacred
world to us. Here awake this
night, we eat and drink beside it,
still.
Harold Recinos is Professor of Church and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. His first poetry collection, Voices on the Corner, will be published by Wipf and Stock in 2016.