How Long O Lord
by Dana Hughes
Because they were DOCTORS she said,
I believed they would help me, believed
in their knowledge, in their experience,
their Hippocratic oath, our common humanity,
for God’s sake.
They saw me arrive full and leave empty
again and again through years of trying
to bring just one child into the world
and they shook their heads and shrugged,
muttering
something about how these things happen,
it’s normal, nature’s way of taking care
of what isn’t meant to be, but after number
nine fell out in the fifth month, it seems they
might have seen
a pattern; done an exam before the end began
instead of after. If my color matched theirs,
they might have said CERCLAGE instead of SORRY
and BEDREST instead of BIRTH CONTROL,
but we weren’t
and they didn’t, and my hands that ache to hold
the one thing in all the world that I would give
my life for are clenched rather than clasped
in prayer as I beg the Lord to forgive whatever it
was I did
to make those babies slip from my womb’s grasp.
I think of Sara, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth,
and wonder how many lives they lost, expelled
in a field or by a stream, not because they were barren,
but ignored.
*”Cerclage”, also known as a cervical stitch, is a treatment for cervical incompetence or insufficiency, when the cervix starts to shorten and open too early during a pregnancy causing either a late miscarriage or preterm birth.
About the Poet: Dana Hughes is a wife to one man, mother to three grown and perfect children, a minister, knitter, quilter, potter, and gardner, and who takes delight in arranging and rearranging words like a quilt being pieced of bits of this and that until the pattern appears.
Poetry Breakfast 
July 25, 2019 at 9:52 PM
Just gotta say, this poem moved me deeply. And such a kind response.
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July 17, 2019 at 8:59 PM
I found this poem very interesting. I have been the recipient of this procedure, twice; the first time over 55 years ago. I always knew the procedure under the name ShirodKa (not quite sure on the spelling of this but certainly the phonetics are there) This was the name of the Indian doctor who first devised the practice of stitching the cervix. In all I had 12 pregnancies. I had 3 healthy daughters, several, so called miscarriages in between when I went under a specialist who advised this procedure. One carried to three months at which time it was considered safe to insert the stitching, which then proceeding to with in a week or two of expected delivery the stitching would be removed. We longed for a son and in this manner our first son arrived, now a healthy 55 year old. Three years later I went through the same process and again delivered of a son. He, however, only survived 17 days. He’d been born with the left ventricle of the heart not developed. (Today operations can be done and infants can survive that also.)
I am white and birth control was certainly proposed to myself and my husband. And this happened in New Zealand where, though we there is not quite full equality, there is still not the issues of colour some citizens of some countries face.
I am so happy Dana you do know the joy of your three children.
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