Lincoln's Birthday (Revision 4)

[billy]

i prefer this version, the grief with the middle version weakens because of it. i think it very good but the narrative verges on prose. the last two lines of the 1st stanza are almost heart wrenching. i have no idea if the tale is true, nor do i need to know. it's pretty powerful as a piece of writing. as a piece of poetry i'd like to see more devices at work, alteration, consonance, and assonance etc. it does read as a very personal piece and that on it's own give the piece some strength. .

no real line by line, as i said it's a solid write.

thanks for the read

For eighteen weeks, I had an unborn son.
At an exam, the doctor scanned
his mother's womb. A veiled foot i like the image of this and the next line, the urgency it shows feels real.
stuck out its open door.
Too soon.
Racing my wife through city blocks,
each stop sign seemed to take an hour.
At the Maternal ER, upon a birthing bed,
her water broke.
"Just gently stroke her hair", broke and stroke work well, you need more of the same elsewhere in the poem.
the nurses said, "and look away."
The only sense I had was what they lent,
so I obeyed.
Christine and I, we grasped
each other's hands. I tried to keep my eyes
locked on her wet and twisting face,
but to one side, just out of focus, brightly lit,
I saw blood on pinkish skin.
The boy slipped out, too young.
He died.

I've since loved two other sons,
but they’re no cure for this regret:
In that bit of time that Lincoln lived
to feel and maybe hear,
before they cut the cord and all went numb—
I looked away.
I did what I was told. For what?
A "sterile field"?
But if I think the nurses' hands
were there to work and not to love—
God damn!
I should've shoved my arm
through all that fuss between the stirrups
where he died
and put a hand upon my son very poignant
to say, "Daddy loves you, go in peace."
What now to touch?
A onesie that will never fit
or prints inked by little feet?
Too late. He'll never be that close again.