Sariah

She’s not Abraham’s Sara, 
who laughs and talks 
to angels 
as if the state of her womb 
were the daily news. 
Lehi’s Sariah just murmurs and waits. 

In Jerusalem, she sifts 
through the pieces of her life: 
the linen she wove for her wedding, 
which was sturdy and coarse, 
and now is smooth velvet from scrubbing.
Gold earrings from 
Laman’s birth—they are 
almost too heavy to wear, but 
soft, and rich. 

She packs green figs, wine, 
bread, ties two goats, 
and in her pocket 
a silk bag of 
ginseng, for there will be children, 
long, painful labors. 
She stays silent, drawing together only
these simplest things. 

In the wilderness she thinks 
that sons can be testaments, 
and children bear the language 
in their blood, the record from 
their mothers, 
and that nations dwindle only 
when they are split open, 
the words soaking red into the sand.

She attends her own birth, 
a small son who comes reluctantly
while she pulls on a rope she has tied
between the tent poles, 
baring her teeth. 

So silent are God’s visions 
that he must know Sariah, she assumes.
He will speak to her when he chooses,
and she will wait, saying nothing.