To My Unborn Children
I.
There are no words deep enough
to drive home your loss,
no apologies
for not bringing you into the light
though you’ve waited years
without a whisper of complaint.
It’s not that I didn’t want to hold you
and bounce you on my knee
but you see, children,
life is a kind of chaotic ballet
that doesn’t much care what you want.
The rigged game of bogus odds,
the failed, childless marriage
that leaves you ten times more
than just empty –
these are the excuses I use
for not bringing you out of the dark.
I try to convince myself
your mouths were too many to feed
your limbs too weedy and quick
to clothe, but it is a lie.
And I must live on, knowing
the tiny wings of your lives
will never beat the summer air.
continued in col.2
Sean Arthur Joyce is an author of poetry, Canadian history and a novel. He has published two books of history and in 2014 published Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest: Canada’s Home Children in the West (Hagios Press) on the little-known phenomenon of the 100,000 poor children exported from the UK to work as indentured child labourers on Canadian farms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
