Loss

She smiles, stifling the stinging sorrow,
swallowing bitter tears that spring un-bid
from a well of regret with flimsy lid
covering a childless tomorrow.
The tiny shoes and matching baby-grow
priceless, paid with the currency of pain,
hope ever stirring, to be lost again.
She gives her gift, and what no-one can know

is her secret. She has never let go
of her dreams, and still, in her rocking chair,
at night, all alone at home, when the air’s
grown chill, at eighty, she rocks to and fro
and weeps for the babies she’d never seen,
and sleeping, she dreams of what could have been.