teaches us our limitations and our strengths. It changes us in constantly unfolding ways and entwines us in the unpredictable mystery of another life.
The poems in this section start and end with a blessing. They begin with âA Cradle Songâ by W. B. Yeats, a lullaby of wonder from a parent to a newborn child. The last poem is Lucille Cliftonâs âblessing the boats,â in which she wishes safe passage for a child whose motherâs arms can no longer protect her from the world.
In motherhood, like poetry, the particular becomes universal. Each detail evokes an entire world of memories. In âSocks,â Sharon Olds describes the feeling of being needed as she lifts her lazy sonâs leg to put on his sock, and every mother can feel the dead weight of that heavy leg with her own muscle memory.
There are also poems about mothers from the childâs point of view. In âClearances,â the special closeness Seamus Heaney felt when he and his mother peeled potatoes together reminds us that sharing the mundane duties of daily life builds a lifetime of love between parent and child.
The old-fashioned poem âSomebodyâs Motherâ by Mary Dow Brine, shares an important theme with Elizabeth Alexanderâs modern works âThe Dream That I Told My Mother-in-Lawâ and âOde.â One of the great gifts of motherhood is the ability to see other peopleâs children as our own, and to feel that the responsibility of caring for them is ours.
My aunt Eunice, who founded the Special Olympics, used to quote Henry Ward Beecher, who wrote, âA motherâs heart is a childâs schoolroom.â Our mothers are our first teachers, and we teach others the same lessons we learn from them. As a child, when your mother believes in you, you believe in yourself, and when that happens, there is nothing you canât do. As a mother, that is the greatest gift we can give to a child.
A Cradle Song
W. B. YEATS
The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
Godâs laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.
Notes from the Delivery Room
LINDA PASTAN
Strapped down,
victim in an old comic book,
I have been here before,
this place where pain winces
off the walls
like too bright light.
Bear down a doctor says,
foreman to sweating laborer,
but this work, this forcing
of one life from another
is something that I signed for
at a moment when I would have signed anything.
Babies should grow in fields;
common as beets or turnips
they should be picked and held
root end up, soil spilling
from between their toesâ
and how much easier it would be later,
returning them to earth.
Bear up . . . bear down . . . the audience
grows restive, and Iâm a new magician
who canât produce the rabbit
from my swollen hat.
Sheâs crowning, someone says,
but there is no one royal here,
just me, quite barefoot,
greeting my barefoot child.
Socks
SHARON OLDS
Iâll play Ninja Death with you
tonight, if you buy new socks, I say
to our son. After supper he holds out his foot,
the sock with a hole for its heel, I whisk it
into the wastebasket. He is tired, allergic,
his hands full of Ninja Death leaflets,
I take a sock from the bag, heft his
Achilles tendon in my palm and pull the
cotton over the arch and instep,
I have not done this for years, I feel
intensely happy, drawing the sock
up the calfâ Other foot â
as if we are back in the days of my great
usefulness. We cast the dice
for how we will fight, I swing my mace ,
he ducks, parries with his chain , Iâm dazed , then
stunned. Day after day, year after
year I dressed our little beloveds
as if it were a lifeâs work,
stretching the necks of the shirts to get them
over their heads, guarding the nape as
Leslie Glass
Ian M. Dudley
Julie Gerstenblatt
Ruth Hamilton
Dana Bate
Ella Dominguez
Linda Westphal
Keri Arthur
Neneh J. Gordon
April Henry