Grant Shimmin
Editor’s Note: The following poems deal with child loss. Please read with care. — CMG
Would I have taken your picture on my phone if you’d been stillborn in the digital age?
I certainly wouldn’t have tweeted it
But I know I could never have deleted it
The guilt and the regret would have been too much
So I’d have held the pain as close as the merest finger touch
What if I’d lost it in transition between phones
And had to learn to find my dead son in the cloud to bring him home?
If I had taken your picture on my phone
I’d have a three-decade-old picture of my pain, unchanged
Unlike me, I’m twice as old, twice more a father, love untold
But would it have brought me healing, there to look at every day
You at peace, red-haired, with eyes never to see?
Or simply kept the pain in place,
Wishing every time I looked for changes I could never make?
If I had taken your picture on my phone would I have captured your mother’s loving look?
As she spoke to you her sadness, as we wished you could respond
but your head bowed down upon your chest would stay
Would it have helped us stay together,
been a tension strung between us?
If she had asked me to take that picture on my phone
There would have been no hesitation bar the framing
Would I have taken your picture on my phone if you’d been stillborn in the digital age?
I can’t be sure but I hope not
Though many will, I have no doubt
and who could blame them?
I never thought of inking footprints, taking moulds of your slender, soft-nailed hands
In my heart there lives a picture of your gorgeous baby shoulders, head inclined towards your feet
Tiny and perfect, in your Mum’s words, is how you’ll ever be
Would I have taken your picture on my phone? I’m so grateful that I never had the choice
… father of two
“Is this going to be your first granddaughter?” the guide asks her, landing a lucky guess
“Actually, it’s going to be my first grandCHILD,” she answers excitedly
She recalls it as part of a travelogue
A wildlife safari full of wonder they’re just back from
To the glowing soon-to-be parents
And us
It’s almost an afterthought
So Matthew, stillborn less than 18 months ago, isn’t a grandchild?
Or wasn’t, strictly speaking, the way I’m hearing this
To be fair, we had no idea it was stillbirth for decades
We just knew it was more than a miscarriage
“We lost our baby at 32 weeks,” we told people
To be fair, I’d not yet thought of myself as a father
Though I’d scattered the ashes of a stillborn son
I say nothing
Because that’s what I say in these situations
I’m one of the family peacemakers
An unofficial role shared with the speaker
It’s not discussed, as far as I remember
Unconsciously I let it burrow down
To lie dormant
For decades
Emerging only … in the embryonic stages of a
poem, 29 years on
Matthew has two grown sisters now
With just our mellowed memories to know him by
I spoke of him at the first wedding
Said he was there that night
Said he was proud of them
Could have confessed
Just how long it had taken to realise
I’m no longer a father of two
But that night wasn’t the time
And by then he knew I knew
Bellbird
The bellbird is keeping his dawn songs brief today
First to announce in the receding gloom
Single muted rings intermittent in the moisture-hung morning air
Enough to know he’s there; a sound check for sunrise
Fragile like my heart setting out into the day
after you went
Grant Shimmin is a South African-born poet resident in New Zealand for 22 years. His poetic passions are human connection, the journey of life, and the natural world. He has work published/forthcoming at Roi Fainéant Literary Press and Filter Coffee Zine, and was recently long-listed in the prose poetry category of the inaugural Plaza Prizes.
