Miscarriage

When I was a month pregnant, the great
clots of blood appeared in the pale
green swaying water of the toilet,
Dark red like black in the salty
translucent brine, like forms of life
appearing, jelly-fish with the clear-cut
shapes of things.

That was the only appearance made by that
child, the dark, scalloped shapes
falling slowly. A month later
our son was conceived, and I never went back
to mourn the one who came as far as the
sill with its information: that we could
botch something, you and I. All wrapped in
purple it floated away, like a messenger
put to death for bearing bad news.

--Sharon Olds (1942- ), American poet and professor at NYU, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot prize, from The Dead and the Living (1984).