Sarah was beautiful. She rode the waves of faith and doubt and perhaps laughed at inappropriate times. She also carried a spark in her womb, the star that birthed a constellation of generations. When writing about Sarah, I too explored the depths of my doubt and the feeling of loss that accompanies every gift. The poem “Sarah Considers the Stars” delves into some of the emotions Sarah must have surely felt as her life and body sagged into what seemed to become an unending, desolate future. Small footnote: the star “scraping” through her body somewhat painfully refers to the release of an egg. Some women, myself included, experience sharp pain at the time of ovulation. That may be too much information, but hey–it’s all for the art, right?
Sarah Considers the Stars
“He took [Abraham] outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” –Genesis 15:5
After Abraham feel asleep,
she pulled her cloak
around her shoulders
and walked out to stare
at the night. Stars collected
in the crevices of mountains.
They spilled into the oak groves
and clung to the branches.
And when she spread her hands
to the sky, they rested in the sags
of flesh between her fingers.
The world is dripping with stars,
she thought, and still not one
belongs to me. She considered
hating them. She considered
wishing a heavenly storm
to drown them. But she only
murmured, I am through
and walked off, holding
a sudden sharpness in her side,
as if a star had dislodged
there, and turning and scraping
and shining its path, settled
into the bare sky of her body.
Tania Runyan: Writings on Poetry & Faith 