Rizpah marked mother’s day
as any other, sitting on her sackcloth
in grim imitation of a picnic blanket,
strewn about with the bones of her sons,
watching hope deteriorate, refusing
to let it be picked clean in the face
of overwhelming evidence
Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org
Rizpah keeps watch in the tranquil night over the decaying bodies of her sons. Mezzotint by R. Dunkarton and J.M.W. Turner, 1812, after the latter.
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
over the water 