A New Eden Imagined

There is a land, unseen, all green

and bright and fresh, always a warm sun

shining; perhaps it’s an image imagined

of an earlier garden, Eden’s earthly garden

before the fall and banishment, first sin,

where the children go now, the unborn children,

lost children, innocent and without voice,

whose mom’s loved, but couldn’t keep,

a hard choice, and maybe the wrong one,

but a choice made. And in that land,

green and bright and fresh, their voice is found,

a voice filled with laughter filling this Eden,

this garden where they are, an eternal childhood

for what they lost, would never experience,  

an eternal garden of delight, where runs a stream

over which there’s a bridge to cross, running,

racing, hand in hand, to the other side,

unencumbered by a life they never lived.

And here, the bright-eyed children in gowns of white

live on, all they will ever know, will ever need to know,

just themselves and the sound of their own laughter,

like the child standing by the bridge, a stick dragging

in the stream, perhaps it’s the one I sent away, the one

I couldn’t keep even before I knew them, held them,

smelled their hair or heard them laugh for I couldn’t give

them laughter, couldn’t guarantee them health, couldn’t

keep them safe in a world gone mad, couldn’t …

so I let them go, holding back only the echo of their laughter,

and the hushed whisper of their voice, softly heard

within my head, softly felt within my heart, softly

carried with me in the long years ahead, remembering

and loving this golden child returned to Eden’s Garden.