As I am wont to do of late, I’ve written something to explain my take on the meaning of the ring:

Tears from Africa
06-Aug-2007

How many of my tears come from Africa?

One thing I remember,
tears cried in a warm monsoon rain
are hidden, and can be denied,
attributed to God
as He waters His earth
in the deluge of His tears.

This one precious tear,
captured by my Beloved, and returned to me,
precious as the rarest tanzanite
entangled in the knots of our lives,
even as our lives are entangled in one another.

This one tear, as I was saying,
a reminder of all the others
cried in warm rains on a Turi hillside
for all the things lost –
things that seem so small in the distance,
but were so large, so heavy,
so chilled my hands as I held them up to warm
in the tears, overflowing from the
compassionate eyes of Mungu.

And now, glorious now,
someone to cry with,
someone with whom to be entangled,
some one with whom I may be one,
and this precious tear,
falling forever towards me,
close enough to taste.

So, there you have it. She wrote a poem about it too, back when she started designing it, but I won’t presume to post her version of it. Meanwhile, as long as I’m posting about this ring, I might as well tell you about the other one, too:

Grass
03-May-2007

A single blade of grass
here
wrapped around my finger.
This is what has been saved
from the years that the locusts have stolen.

It is enough.

And look,
suddenly,
there is grass everywhere,
even where there was none
before the locusts
ravaged everything.

Almost everything.

They left
this one blade.