Dear friends,

In the coming weeks I wish to feature a series of poems from a brilliant young woman I 've recently had the pleasure of meeting and spending an evening with......Solveig Evers is a poet of immeasurable depth and truth. She is a woman who looks like a beautiful little girl herself. I do not know how old she is -- her look is timeless, childlike, woman. Her words have pierced my soul. Truth always does. I had thought to display her words, same as I have done in weeks past -- offering her poems one at a time like everyone else's poetry featured here. But sometimes when we hear the truth in short, comfortable soundbytes, it doesn't stick to our hearts. Solveig's words must stick.....

For years I have been an advocate of "Truth in Adoption"-- never having known my own birth mother or father, never having been allowed legal access to my own birth records. Adoptees, unlike everyone else on the planet, are not entitled to know who they are or where they came from. In many cases they die not knowing. As an adoptee, I felt genuine blinding rage at not being able to find out WHO I AM, and at a world that kept the truth locked away from me as if I were criminal. For years I denied my anger toward a mother who set those wheels in motion for this by giving me away, getting rid of me. My own mother. Why didn't she look for me? Why didn't she miss me? Did she remember my birthday? Did she name me before she gave me up? Did her loss hurt her as much as my loss hurt me?How can a woman give her own child away -- I couldn't give mine away......These questions would haunt me to my death.

When I "found " my birth brothers in 1998, after searching for years, my joy was soon eclipsed by the dull pain of those never-to-be-answered questions. Both of my parents had been dead since 1971. I would never know. Neither of my brothers had any idea I ever existed. No one had been searching for me. My birth had been a well-kept secret.

Upon reading Solveig's poetry, however, it is apparent to me that our paths have crossed for a blessed purpose. Maybe more than one. God counts our tears. He has heard Solveig's. And He has answered my prayers through the startling, poignant truth which she has courageously deigned to share here. Indeed, her own words may well be the closest thing to an answer some, like me, ever get.......
May God bless her.

"TRUTH IN ADOPTION"

(PART 1) Posted May 19, 2001

(PART 2) Posted June 28, 2001

FEBRUARY POEM
March 27, 1989

That February I couldn't write a poem:
A certain type of insanity clutched my heart and mind

It stayed my hand.
In February I couldn't even pen a simple line.
But I grieved as I have never grieved.
I could only cry and reach for my baby.
"Oh, Please, I beg you, give me back my baby!"

There is no eloquent way to ask for your baby back,
There is no way to be gracious in begging for your baby
Nor are there pretty poems.

In February and Early March
That ghastly hope that is so sure to be denied,
The one that makes us cringe under its potential --
That power of cruel hope -- it belonged to me.

And I couldn't write a poem about it because it was
just too terrible.

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POEM IN APRIL
April 22, 1989

Even now, with a certain thought,
On a certain date,
with the passing of a little girl,
Even now she will still come all undone.

And, well, she still dies inside
to think of it.
Her heart comes to understand God's undoing
of the works of a man's hands.

She knows because He commenced to undo the work of a
young woman's hands: He placed a loveliness
under her heart for nine months.
And a burden settled into that place for too long
to even think about.

He gave her what would never be her own.

Baby, today you are five months old.

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STEPHANIE'S
June 21, 1989

Little children, birthmothers long for you.
We who had never been known to "mother" anyone,
We love you most of all.
Little daughters,
Little sons,
We birthmothers long for you and we wonder.
We who had never before contemplated our mothernesses,
We love you, but we may not even quite know why.

Jesus, you were never a mother.
You were never surprised by an agonizing joy such as
this.

Children came to you.
Did you ever put them away and wonder why you couldn't
stop crying?
Did you ever hold a child born from your body?
Did you ever love this very little one with all your
heart and sincerely wonder why you even give a
damn?

Little children,
We will always long for you.
We may not ever quite understand the reasons why.

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PART 2

LITTLE KOREAN CHILD WHO DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW HER BIRTHMOTHER
July 12, 1989

She was a woman who felt your
little life inside her,
And whose thoughts turned often
toward your little unborn person-ness.

She was the first to quietly ponder your coming,
And to hold the knowledge of your existence as a
treasure in her heart.

She was the first to perhaps cry for you,
She was the first to perhaps leave you,
She was the first to perhaps have no happiness in loving you.

Motherhood breaks the hearts of young women sometimes.
Often it can break the hearts of my little sisters.

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RED POEM July 12, 1989

"Well," I will say, "and I am content now with my decision" --
I will explain to you the why and the when. . . .

The red with which He colored our
   hearts is a promise provided
   for the broken pieces,
And for the ones that are still missing.
"The color of moving through pain,"
   I was once told.

Moving through pain.

We are still moving through the pain now.
When we are too alone
We will still be trying to deny
the secret discontent,
And when we try not to remember the way
a little baby smells.
When we push away memories of infant hands, then
we will still be trying to outrun that
heaviness lodged in the corner of our selves.

We will still be moving through the pain.

I try so hard to remember that the red with which
He colored our hearts is a promise. . .

(Note: the idea of God coloring our
hearts red and that it's the color of moving through pain,
comes from a song/poem my mom wrote down for me in a letter she sent me from China.
I don't know the author of the poem or it's title.)

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UNTITLED August 13, 1989

How can one tell another of something so deep and moving?
Birthmother, you can now truly say you know what love is.
Even when the worst is over you will be surprised,
You will be taken back by an ache in your heart,
By now familiar, and yet
Now, at times, forgotten for awhile.

Do you still wonder why this is?
You must remember that it's because she was
so small and tender in your arms that morning.
She was warm and real; her eyes were wide and very dark
Her mouth was round and red.
And she was your very little baby girl
Beautiful in your arms and upon your breast.

I can tell you myself that this is not a petty trial.
When I weep in the shower because I still have her milk
in my breasts
I am somehow taken aback by the ache in my heart,
By now way too familiar, and yet
Thank God,
I forget about it once in a while.

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AFTER ELEVEN YEARS November 1, 1999

Now I am far away,
And have been in days
Past.
And not for days only
but for months and years.

Tears from the tearing from my very self
The infant sweet shape of you.

Years of yearning
Tears from the tearing
Numb from the number of thoughts turned toward you.
Numb, finally, from that blessed formal feeling.

I can see so well now -- I no longer have visions of
the dark rivers of her hair.

Now I am far away,
And you are being you, making us all happy,
Knowing we have the sweet shape of you in our world.

And I am being myself; God is making me happy.
Now I know the number of times His thoughts must have been
Of me.

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P.S. You may write to Solveig HERE!

BACK to my poetry page

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