Woman

By Jean S. Marshall

In the season

of the green and tender wheat,

Rebekah,

grown womanly

and waiting,

welcomed a stranger at the well.

And when the golden earring

swung cool

against her blushing neck,

she imagined distant fields.

(But what of the love

of singing eyes

and strong, warm hands to hold,

and beating, beating hearts?)

Silently

and in a secret place

she unraveled knots of doubts

and loops and circles of fears

from the golden earring

from the sign,

and she said, “I will go.”

Her hair

parted and brushed and brushed,

glistening,

oiled,

she bowed her head to heavy hands

of blessing,

and she went away on camels

with the servant,

and she passed through desert.

(But to a stranger,

and where is the singing, singing heart?)

Dowered

by days of sowing and harvest,

by holy days,

by hearth fires,

and the rhythm of sweeping brooms,

Rebekah lifted up her eyes

and beheld Isaac—

and she became his wife,

and he loved her.

And the wheat grew golden

and all the fields yielded good harvests.

Illustrated by Cheryl Christensen