NaPoWriMo #5: scraps

I liked the "scraps" prompt I used last year so much, I'm recycling it for this year. The scraps I used today are from a few lines I jotted down when I was in the hospital last June. My friend Erica, who had lost a little boy at 24 weeks just two years before I lost my baby boy, was with me.

She told me how after her own loss, she had felt like a field that had been plowed and planted, but with no harvest. Then, just a few days later, her milk came in. She was devastated, and in so much pain physically as well.

Erica's sharing her experience with me, and then being at my side through much of my own miscarriage, was a tremendous source of strength for me. So, this is a sad poem but hope comes after it.


Harvest

The field, planted
in fertile furrows
a rich corduroy of rows.

The seeds, sown
soak up rain
that smells of April.

We watch
we wait
for the first green shoots to appear.

And in the steady sun
of the growing season
they do.

Then, without warning
without reason
those fragile leaves
shrivel on their stalks
scatter in a gust of warm wind
and are gone.

They leave only empty arms
and one reminder
of the hoped-for harvest:

swollen, tender breasts
sagging under the weight
of unsuckled milk
that will
all too soon
dry up
and be gone.