No Word for a Mother Who’s Lost an Unborn Child

Like a widow, I walk around off-kilter,
a ship tilting in the narrow.
On the banks, people discuss how I am listing.
The leaning is greater than they understand.
 
My ship tilts in the narrow.
Sometimes I come ashore for flowers.
They lean after a rain, heaviness I understand.
I anchor my ear to the dirt, straining for a trickle
 
of sound. Sometimes I swear I can hear flowers
drinking. Their root hairs absorb a precious portion.
I press my forehead to the dirt. My pulse trickles.
A squirrel scrabbles on the tree.
 
Sorrow distills what is precious, a portion
of love rising like mayflies, floating paper ash.
Squirrels have disappeared into the trees.
The sky stars itself into night. Cold finds the soil.
 
Wind rises, floating the fir tips on branches, my ashen
hair. Nature’s language is grief, a burnt offering
to the night. What sleeps in the topsoil—
the wisdom of decay—mycelia will translate
 
into joy. Nature’s language is grief, a private offering.
We know it like we know the tall grass, rustling
its wisdom. A million underground threads translate
electrical whispers. They say patience is tendril,
 
is hyphae, is longer than the tall, rustling
grass. Longer than all our turnings back
to what expired in us. My whisper’s a tendril
of some seeking vine, reaching out, asking.
 
Grief turns into stalk, into stem, into the back-
bone I need to walk straight in a world off-kilter.
The ballast for my keel, mine for the asking.
People on the banks, are you listening?