It rained steadily all day....
By
It has rained steadily all day.
Shut in three storeys up,
I begin to understand Noah's wife
And forgive her for being dull.
After all the feverish activity
Packing food for the passengers,
Seeing to the bedding,
Taking on herbal remedies,
Filling the cracks in the Great Ark
Operation
Leaving nothing to
chance.
After all that woman's fussing
To be shut in
And see it rain steadily all day,
See the tide rising
And know that the fussing space was
shrinking,
Hear her daughters-in-law whispering,
Patting their bellies,
Pleased to be in the family way.
Noah's wife, thinking about the months
to come,
Counted new mouths to feed
Measured diminishing space,
And the rising tide of emergencies.
It rained steadily all day
By evening she had wound up her nerves
And got her tongue
under control.
We have no record that she subsequently
panicked
Or lost her temper or her knack with
babies
And fractious men
And other animals.
She neither expected nor got much
credit.
She didn't presage
The
Flood
Nor build the
It must have made Noah mad
To see her composure,
The way she looked when he reminded her
for the
millionth time
That they owed their
lives to him.
He wasn't much help when the babies
came,
Or the lioness had cubs
He built the
She built survival.
When they docked on Ararat
Her daughters-in-law did the fussing.
She had grown heavy on her legs.
They were lighter than on embarkation.
She sat on Ararat
And surveyed the new creation
And kept her mouth shut
And her nerves under control
As had become her habit
Since the day it rained steadily all
day.