When the people are assembled

Waiting on the prophet,

They will not recognize 

A young pregnant native girl

Too round to ride the donkey.

They would not make a way for me.

Grandfather walked beside me.

He shook his head,

For they had no respect.

I had to step out in the muddy turn row

By the green corn and sank up to my thighs 

In the irrigated field,

But I kept walking toward the amphitheater.

The staff in my hand was from

The tribe of Aaron,

To demonstrate to the populous,

That all we, all we tribes, are lost tribes.

I stood on the hillside

And looked a long way down

To where the pulpit was,

But I lost faith

In the people

Who would not let me through.

I had a message of hope and love

And a missing piece of knowledge 

That the generations needed

To be able to understand.

But I also had a baby kicking in my belly,

And I had thick brown mud caked up over my thighs.

I only got to braid my way through

The fringes of the population,

With onlookers gawking at my muddy legs and extended abdomen,

Before I saw that I would never

Penetrate their margins or their minds.

The mob had pushed me like a river, flood stage,

And washed me up on a bluff above them.

I scraped the mud off my legs

And made a decision.

We will start a new tribe

And follow a new way 

With only what we have at hand:

My grandfather, Aaron's staff,

A colt that had never been ridden,

And the unborn child in my womb.

Oh, and myself,

I was just starting to learn

That I should never underestimate my self.

-jenn