We never hear of her when we read

how Noah gathered all God’s creatures—

large and small and led them two by two

into his Ark before the flood.

We hear about his sons and how

they worked to help him gather in the beasts

and birds, the snakes and bugs and sail

beneath dark clouds and blowing rain

those forty days and nights until the dove

returned with a leaf and soon they found dry land.

We know he was a righteous man, blameless

we are told, but his nameless wife and the wives

of his sons remain unspoken of, but it was she

who gathered seeds from every plant,

who cared for them while she worked in Noah’s

shadow to feed and tend their beasts of every kind.

And when the rainbow came that marked

a new beginning, it was she who made the gardens

grow, the trees fill up with leaves and fruit,

who made the fields golden with wheat and barley

and still we never hear her name or how the seeds

she carried nourished all the generations after her.

We do not know if this story handed down to us

is true, but if it is, this wife who gathered seeds,

who has no name, whose beating heart and breath

let Noah and her sons be known while she went

about her days, humming happy songs, planting seeds.