Sitting in an empty room,
with four patina walls,
old lace curtains,
with faded pashminas and shawls,
sat a destitute woman
in a room worth a king’s ransom

In things she lacked, but kindness she sufficed,
her beauty once apparent, now seasoned with time,
a widow with vanished wealth and vanquished greed,
what was left,
but this empty room

One window gave light,
to words foreign to the eye, familiar to the soul,
she read daily,
a mysterious scroll, of the Southern Levant,
This was all she had,
Words

These words made kings fortune’s fool,
and material acquisition a lowly pursuit,
Of scholars and kings,
this they may never have and far too few ever,
an empty room filled with nothing