The Lost Baby Poem

Water, in various forms, is a recurrent motif throughout Clifton’s “lost baby poem.” It appears in every stanza, first when the speaker recalls dropping the “almost body / down to meet the waters under the city” (Lines 1-2). The water flows under the city, almost hidden or secret, pumping fresh drinking water in and taking dirty water out. The reference to the plumbing of the city represents the hidden mechanisms that make the world work. For the speaker, her abortion is something private or unseen, but something that happens nonetheless. The idea of currents—water being pushed out to sea and back in as difficult memories—both represents the “almost body” (Line 1), and the speaker’s emotions. The speaker draws the connection between the imagined child and snow, which will eventually melt to “run one with the sewage to sea” (Line 2). Water in this poem is constantly moving and flowing, coming in to drown the speaker with memories and flowing out to take away the pain. Therefore, the speaker vows to let the waters overtake her should she not be a good mother to her other children: “let the rivers pour over my head” (Line 17). She almost feels she owes a debt to the ocean, that in terminating her pregnancy she betrayed the ocean: “let the sea take me for a spiller / of seas” (Lines 18-19).