Kirstie McKinnon
Miscarriage can be a difficult experience. It feels delicate for me still, although it has been several years since my last miscarriage. There is a silence that accompanies this kind of loss, a lack of conversation, a lack of acknowledgement, a problem of knowing how to say how it is, and to whom. Dolphins and whales tell their grief through action and their way of speaking has provided me – after a long time – with a way to find some human language to express my own ‘long swim’.
Whale mother
The whale mother
if her calf dies
will carry the body
on her back until
it breaks to fragments
I know the full scale
of this process
the long swim
of mourning
a body carried on
the back of my mind
over and over and over
until memory is scattered
to marram tips
to stars, to gull wings
until my hand steadies
on ocean rock.
Kirstie McKinnon lives, writes and surfs in East Coast Otago, New Zealand. She is inspired by the sea and its creatures, nature, conversation, art and humanity.
Kirstie you moved me to a place that remembered my long swim!
There were no words there.
You cannot convey to others that have not been there because all the platitudes say “ it was for the best “.
This post has power and strength. The parallels between the largest maternal mammal and ourselves is extraordinary.
Thank you so much for sharing
Thank you Tracey.