The Unborn


The sign says Love your babies, born and unborn.
Each morning the 40-foot billboard can’t be missed,
but know it isn’t you—it’s ourselves we mourn.

Casinos, fast food, vodka, and righteous scorn—
it is because we love you you don’t exist,
a sign we love you, beloved never-born.

Warm darkness from which you were untimely torn—
better to be unborn than unloved, unkissed,
unknown—it isn’t you but ourselves we mourn.

Some billboards here say simply JESUS or warn
of the many pleasant sins we must resist.
This sign says Love your babies, born and unborn,

as if this life weren’t hell enough, the forlorn
and loveless driving from disappointing trysts
or to crappy jobs—it’s only ourselves we mourn.

The giant Jesus weeps in his bloody thorns,
but rather than make us crash or slash our wrists
we sing our love to you, our lost unborn,
and ourselves, the ones you’ve left, the ones we mourn.