Last Day of Indian Summer

Monday October 22, 1979

Dearest Child,

It is 12:50 now and we know that you have died in the womb.  Why or how, we cannot say.

Where was God?
dancing in your heart
my little unborn babe,
my little wave.

Now Dawn and I must birth your dead body out.  This is a testing time for us, and would have been for you as well, but you are dead.

Such a simple thing - death.  For one like yourself, warm and hidden in Dawn's womb I am sure it was an easy death, a happy death.  But Dead you are, and we . . . we must bear the pain.

1/3/80

Morgan

Tonight I found your picture

neatly folded, hidden in my wallet.

I remember that light filled Summer day

alive with the sound of crickets in the new-mown hay.

In the cool darkness of the hospital room they 

attached the equipment to Dawn's belly and 

opened a window on your place.

We watched you wriggle your toes with 

the careless abandon of a child.

Tiny elfling in your mama's belly

floating, gurgling in an amniotic world.

(The picture shows you smiling, I swear,

through your fluid playground.)

Strange isn't it? In a single moment I

saw your birth, your first steps, splashing baths,

fearful first days of school, dates, love, education,

beauty, work - in your wiggling toes I witnessed

the entirety of your existence.

II

The night before you died

Dawn and I lay like spoons

and I felt your nudging insistence

against my arm as I enfolded you both.

You still strove toward the light

toward freedom from your fluid world.

(Hadn't you listened to your mother

weeping in the darkness, whispering for you

to stay inside . . . where love was as real

as the blood that passed between you?)

III

As you crouched dying , slipping away

in silence, aware only of your mother's heartbeat

quietly booming in your ears,

What did you recall?

Did you hear again my muffled voice

call to you through Dawn's belly?

Purring cats kneading their paws against you?

Car rides with the sound of laughing friends?

The pull of the tide on your fluid world

when Dawn and I walked beside the sea?

In the brief span of your life

what treasures lay in the halls of your mind?

What primal impulses quicken your breast?

What did you dream as you crouched, dying?

IV

In the warm fluid darkness of the womb

what is death like?

How differs the fetal sleep from that of the dead?

Did you die in your sleep as we lay sleeping?

Death knows only questions - never answers, never answers.

When you were born you were as warm as life.

You lacked nothing save a little breath,

save God's anointing spirit.

Was death easy for you?  Letting go so painless?

I wondered how long your spirit lingered.

Did you stay by to ease our pain?

V

I recall when I was very young my

grandmother bathing me, choosing clothes

for me to wear, laying me on the kitchen

table of the farm house which haunts my dreams 

even now.

My Grandmother, my Nana, 

who herself once bore a girlchild with dark hair 

and round cheeks like your own.

Into her hands I commend your infant spirit

for safe keeping until I myself can come 

to you and hold you 

again

to my heart.

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