Early Harvest

by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

Midsummer.          Eventide.          Live waters.
You:          broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves
hewn down,
washed,
rushed
headlong through death’s threshing current.
You:          pre-ripe, holy harvest
wrested from these, your people;
gathered to those, your people
who attend from iridescent pastures.
You:          Firstborn son,
First fruits of my womb,
Firstling of our flock,
First raised of our labors  . . .
Enfolded now in the arms of the
First raised from the dead,
First lover of the flock,
First fruits of the tomb,
Firstborn Son  . . .
O, Son!
Sweet, sacrificial fruit of my flesh,
Preserved in spirit
Till that first morn when you, our first reborn,
Shoot forth
’Mid spring.            ’Mid song.


Parker Fairbourne Bradford, age eighteen, died July 21, 2007, after plunging twice into a rural river’s deadly undertow to save a friend who was drowning. The friend lived, but Parker never regained consciousness after 38 hours in a coma.

Melissa Dalton-Bradford and her husband, Randall, live in Munich, Germany, the fourth international address they have called home. It is in these cultures that they have raised their four children and served in the Church, and it is about such nomadic and multilingual parenting that Melissa has written and lectured. Her MA in comparative literature has, logically, led her to teaching the arts and letters and, less logically, to singing on the musical theater stage. Upstaging such roles, however, is her consuming love for Christ’s gospel and for her family. Since the summer of 2007 when her eldest son lost his life saving a friend, she has learned things about motherhood that have driven even deeper her belief that raising a child to the Lord is the most she could ever ask from life.