Two Daughters

No one gets this far along in life without some sorrow. I've been digging around through drawers looking for something that I just can't find. Along the way I've come across decades-old letters from youthful friends (now grandmothers), ancient Christmas cards from those gone for many years now, and notebooks full of things that I wrote long ago.

This is my poem about the loss of two of my daughters. They were two very different kinds of losses; one, a little baby who died right after birth; the other, a disturbed, angry, and damaged teenager, adopted well after she had been hurt by those who should have been caring for her. The lines in italics are from lullabies that I sang to both of them.

Two Daughters

Hushaby

Makes me think about loss
And the babies missing from my life

Don’t you cry

The one who died and the one who just went away...
So many people getting in the way

Go to sleep, my little baby

I see those well-meaning arms reaching out

When you wake

Taking my daughters down long institutional halls
And never bringing them back to me

You will see

Prodding, cutting, taking, excusing, burning, blowing the ashes away,
Analyzing, formulating, theorizing, reporting, and taking and taking and taking

All the pretty little horses

Now I am wondering how we let other people
Take over and take away the people who belong to us

Where’d you leave your lamb

In night-time partings without a single touch good-bye

Away down yonder in the valley

And when the moon is full
And the nights are long and I am awake forever

The bees and the butterflies

I am trying to imagine your lives
And I wonder if you get afraid

Are flitting ‘round its eyes

The way I do

And the poor little thing is crying