“Woman, give me a drink,”
he begged, shattering to shards
the laws dividing Jew from Samaritan,
men from women, clean from unclean.
“How can you, a Jew, ask a woman
of Samaria for a drink?” She scolded,
parrying his peacemaking
with her empty cup.
“Woman, broken by broken covenants,”
he said, “leave these man-made
laws and buckets. Take the truth
of Living Water, springing inside you,
and carry it to your people.
tell them the prophet they wait for –
the I AM who told you everything –
Is waiting for them at the well.”
After her telling, all Samaria
came out to drink his words.
The black sheep of Israel
grew fat again on the flowing hills.
Joseph rested at last in peace
at the well of his father, Jacob.
And in her burial cave in Hebron,
Sarah’s brittle bones dissolved in laughter.
3. To Jesus at the Well
Midnight dew,
Grown now to
dayspring, waiting in
parched noon for woman
to bring her heavy jars
to draw water from a tired well,
teach her
to seek wells
beyond her dreaming –
to leave battered buckets at
dead cisterns and clean the debris
from the living spring inside her.
Christ, guide her to that flowing sea.
From: Woman Un-Bent by Irene Zimmerman
