A Poem “To an Unborn Child” by Dorothy Huston Hodel

April 15, 2026
Birch Bay, Washington

Today would have been my mother, Dorothy Huston Hodel’s 120th birthday.

My mother, Dorothy—whom my father called “Dorero”—wrote this poem in July 1977, just weeks before the birth of my first son, Michael.

I found it later among her personal papers after she passed.

It was written for him.

To an Unborn Child — Dorothy Hodel (July 1977)

Song of the lark
Implicit in the egg;
Voice of you
Implicit in the womb.

Created in one moment
When time stopped;
And ancient dust spiralled
to life again,
all along the genetic
coil,

Forming you — and
you lived —

So let time stop again
when in some future
season
you despair in darkness
and are most alone.

Say to yourself:

“I had a kins woman
once,
Not wise, but who loved
well,

Who knew this time
would come to me —
Whose tears would have
mingled with
mine,”

Whose love would have
borne me up.
But knowing such ghostly-
love cold comfort,

Tried to demolish Time;
Tried as the Egyptians did
with golden replicas
To guard against
corruption;

Tried to conquer time
With these frail spiral-
ing words

Which… Time cannot rub
out:

To say: her love lives
Reaches —
Touches —
Is with me now —

Dorothy Hodel
7–16–77

                    Dorothy Hodel (“Dorero”), Los Angeles, circa 1980

Postscript:
She had hoped my second son, Matt, would be born on her birthday—but he waited one more day.
She used to joke that she herself was born the day the Titanic sank—“a sign of the future?”

A few years ago a reader/muscian, Hannah Aldrige, wrote and published a song, “Dorero” inspired by my mother’s life.  See link HERE.