Due to a great deal of computer difficulties, not many updates have been added lately to forgottengrief.com. I will begin to add weekly or biweekly blurbs to this blog on suggestions, ideas, and informal discussions of aspects of grief and mourning at stillbirth and the perinatal period. Two new poems soon to be posted, entitled, "The Petite Dress", and "
The Petite Dress
I would have clothed you
I want you to know
In this hour of despair
In my weeping
With the Satins and Silks
And Luminous Linens
Of Fairy Tales
I would have held you
Cradled in attendant arms
In Holy Dedication
Promising Our God
A Life for Him
I would have sung you
Tales of paradise
Of the Heaven where none die
And there are no more infants of Days
As He promised
My lullabies would have been hymns
Or treasonous little limericks
To force an infant smile
The soft whispers
That define Mornings
And give us back our names.
Instead I stand in
this shuddering moment
Purchasing an eternal garment
This Petite Dress.
I have chosen the white cotton
With the demure satin roses
White as fuller’s white
To dress you for your King
Surrendering what was not ours
To love but for moments
Choosing not to rage
At least for moments
At the small Garden
At the heart
We were not allowed to tend
At the heart, loved in distances
Yet ever near
Sung to in dreams and visions
Do you hear? As we hear?
Those hymns as tiny dresses
Thundering in our souls
When weeping pauses
And we hold you in a vision
The prisons of mourning
The dungeons
Where mourning mothers
Choose fierce Manacles
To remain at love’s door
A moment more?
And though my fingers grasp and ache
The baby garment strewn with
The fine embroidered smocking
Before it becomes
A bridal veil,
And the end of my heart
Before I must relinquish
Even my own garment
The tormented iron shackles of mourning
Before I let go
Here is my hymn,
I have already loved you
And will never cease
The breaking crescent of a thousand waves
Will be the counterpoint
Rushing into heaven
Where you have gone before
Dressed in His Glory
In Edenic Mercy
He already encompasses you
In Love greater than mine
(Though for the moment
I cannot embrace that wisdom)
My heart cry
Is Little One in the Petite Dress
Shining in the Holy Presence
Where small souls cry Abba, Father
I sing of your beauteous gown
And the one I shall wear
In Reunion soon,
When mourning flees
And we will recount in Joy
The wisdom of Eternity
Which escapes me
In this hour
Of the Petite Dress.
©2009 Elizabeth K. Best
-----------------------------
Mourning has a finer Thread
Mourning has a finer thread
Than mourners ever see
Runs contrary to the suffering Soul
And hides beneath the weave
Receiving blankets bathed in pale
Golden, pink and blue
Conceal the thread that none can bind
Yet pierce the heart straight through
That threaded shroud
That mocked the heart
A briared bassinet
It should have called to comfort rock
It called with Sorrow’s net
To fasten unsuspected there
The thorn which pierced His brow
The Crown that mocked
All Heaven’s King
Sits aching on mine now
Elizabeth k. best ©2009
Hope you like these. For general info, you can follow this blog, with an RSS feed.
Blessings this Spring day, although yesterday we still had snow in Wisconsin!.
Libbie Best
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