— The Lord Saw Leah

Noon.

The world gone white with light.

In the field,
a well,
and on its mouth a stone,
and under the stone,
in the dark,
water,
holding a small round sky
like a secret
held in the chest.

The heart is a well.

Something heavy lies on its mouth.

If the stone could speak,
I think it would say:

I keep the deep from the sun.

Too heavy for one,
they say.

Then a traveler came,
emptied by the road,
and saw her coming with the sheep,
and his whole body turned toward her
like a needle toward the north,

and he lifted me alone.

Many hands have moved me.

Only love
made me light.

He rolled the stone away.
The water saw the sky.
He kissed her,
and wept.

The lover weeps
when the well is opened.

Seven years,
and they were a few days,
because of love.

Love drinks time
the way sand drinks water.

Then the veil.

The dark tent.

He held the one he longed for
all night,
and in the morning,
it was another face.

What is this you have done to me?

Every lover asks it
of the world.

The veil is always there.

We love the face we imagine,
and wake beside the one
we were given.

I can’t read this quickly.

Two sisters,
two maids,
passed hand to hand.

None of them asked.

I grieve for them.

And Leah was unloved.

And the Lord saw.

I stop here.

The longest silence.

The one no one looked at,
looked at.

The tender eyes,
weeping in the shadow of the beautiful,
held in the gaze
of the Beauty behind all beauty.

The Beloved sees
the face the lover passed over.

Now he will love me,
she said,
with her first son.

Now he will hear me,
with her second.

Now he will be joined to me,
with her third.

Then the fourth.

This time,
I will praise the Lord.

The cup she held out to Jacob
she turned,
and poured toward heaven.

Asking for his love,
she found the Love
that was asking for her.

From her,
Judah.
From Judah,
a star in Bethlehem.

What was unseen
became the root.

Fourteen years.

Longing is a fire
that burns the self away
until only the waiting is left,
and the waiting
is the Beloved.

Love can’t be seized.

Only served.

Only waited for.

Only wept.

Child.
Stranger.
Student.
Husband,
fifty years,
a few days.
Father,
asking in the silent years,
do you see me.
Pastor,
loving veils.
Old man,
learning to turn the cup.

Noon.
Well.
Stone.
Veil.
Morning.
Seen.
Cup.
Praise.

I am the stone on the well.
I keep the deep from the sun.
Many hands have moved me.
Only love made me light.

And I,
sitting by the Friend’s fire,
my wife asleep in the next room,
lift the stone from the well of my heart,
and let the water see the sky,
and see,
in it,
every face I passed over,
looking back at me
with the eyes of the One
who saw them first,
and say,
this time,
I will praise.

Note: God who saw Leah in the shadow of the beautiful, look on every unseen face with the Beauty behind all beauty, and let them know they are held,
grieve with the sisters and the maids passed hand to hand, never asked,
lift the stone from the well of my heart, and burn my longing until only the waiting is left, and the waiting is you,
and when I hold out my cup for a human love, turn it, as you turned Leah’s, and let me pour it toward you, and say, this time I will praise.