Four Beautiful Motherhood Poems

Song for a Fifth Child (Babies Don’t Keep) by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton Mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth! Empty the dustpan, poison the moth, Hang out the washing and butter the bread, Sew on a button and make up a bed. Where is the mother whose house is so shocking? She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking! Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby, loo). Dishes are waiting and bills are past due (Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo). The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo. Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue? (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.) Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow, But children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow. So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep. I’m rocking my baby. Babies don’t keep.

I have two boys; this one absolutely kills me every time. The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb Sharon Olds Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t have by now. Whatever the world is going to do to him it has started to do. With a pencil and two Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and grapes he is on his way, there is nothing more we can do for him. Whatever is stored in his heart, he can use, now. Whatever he has laid up in his mind he can call on. What he does not have he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one folds a flag at the end of a ceremony, onto itself, and onto itself, until only a heavy wedge remains. Whatever his exuberant soul can do for him, it is doing right now. Whatever his arrogance can do it is doing to him. Everything that’s been done to him, he will now do. Everything that’s been placed in him will come out, now, the contents of a trunk unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse. I love it because it’s so deliciously negative. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

My very favourite mother poem is Her Birthday as Ashes in Seawater, by Sharon Olds. It’s about the shape of grief for a dearly departed mother, but a while after her death. I think it’s just gorgeous, and reminds me of so many of the things that I relate to my own mother (who is thankfully still bodily among us). By now, my mother has been pulled to the top of many small waves, carried in the curve that curls over, onto itself, and unknots, again, into the liquid plain, as her ions had first been gathered from appearances and concepts. And her dividend, her irreducible, like violet down, thrown to the seals, starfish, wolf spiders on the edge-of-Pacific floor, I like to follow her from matter into matter, my little quester, as if she went to sea in a pea-green boat. Every separate bit, every crystal shard, seems to be here — her nature unknowable, dense, dispersed, her atomization a miracle, the earth without her a miracle as if I had arrived on my own with nothing to owe, nothing to grieve, nothing to fear, it would happen with me as it would, not one molecule lost or sent to the School Principal or held in a dried-orange-pomander strongbox stuck with the iron-matron maces of the cloves. My mother is a native of this place, she is made of the rosy plates of the shell of one who in the silt of a trench plays music on its own arm, draws chords, and then the single note — rosin, jade, blood, catgut, siren-gut, hair, hair, hair — I miss her, I lack my mother, such peace there is on earth now every tooth of her head is safe, ground down to filaments of rock-crab fractals and claw facets, the whole color wheel burst and released. Oh Mom. Come sit with me at this stone table at the bottom of the Bay, here is a barnacle of egg custard, here is your tiny spoon with your initials, sup with me at dawn on your first day — we are all the dead, I am not apart from you, for long, except for breath, except for everything.

This poem has been a great reminder to slow down when I’m with my children: Hurry By Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her, Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry— you walk ahead of me. You be the mother. And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says, hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

“Don’t worry about whether anybody else likes you. Come home. We’ll always like you here.” Marian Robinson (Michelle Obama’s mom)

Thank you for this. It was weirdly a bummer to read the big salad issue the weekend of Mother’s Day and have it all focused on negative feelings about motherhood and mother’s day. I absolutely love all the diverse perspectives here, but it was a bit like having someone tell you all about how much they hate birthdays at your birthday party.

Mother by Ted Kooser Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass an the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts burning in circles like birthday candles, for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

And then there is one I wrote when my family and I were all sick in different rooms on NYE 2023: Midnight Bells, Lauren Knochelmann: I stayed awake until the booms died down, until the night lifted its skirt, and all of the hopefuls pushed the doors open again so they could return home, pockets filled with resolutions and brains now fuzzy from fizz. It was lonely, as I was all alone at the strike of 12, no kisses to be had, no hug to be shared. But, to keep oneself company with a good book, and an open mind is one of life’s greatest gifts. I felt I could hear his soft, little, six year old snores from the room next door, and her sneezes and sniffles from the guest room below. I held them in my heart, as always, and knew that we would band together again come sunrise dawn to try our hand at a joyful new year. Until then, I toss and turn in my empty bed and listen, for the sounds of the family, sick, for the pulse of my loves as they rest, and for the bells to ring in a new year, this midnight.

Don’t fill up on bread I say absent-mindedly .The servings here are huge. My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says “Did you really just say that to me?” What he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, when we get to the curb I sometimes start to reach for his hand —Robert Hershon

There is another Kate Baer poem on motherhood that I absolutely love. I think I first learned of it on COJ. It has the line about nothing preparing you for this love’s suffering. So true.

I’m a bit late to this comments section, but I thoroughly recommend this funny, touching and observant parenting poem written and performed by Harry Baker: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF5N7E4oEQ_/?igsh=M294ZzhyZWM4NW4=

I used to play with my father that I have won the Nobel-prize in biology, a subject I did not care of in high-school. Then he died. I was 18, it was 33 years ago on this day. Reading the third poem, I cannot stop crying.

It’s not a poem but I just finished “These Is My Words,” a historical novel by Nancy E. Turner, which felt in part like a book-length poem on motherhood, and the idea people have posted here of “both and,” and it was so engrossing, beautiful, heartbreaking, and compelling, I just wish there was someone to talk about it with, so I’m posting this here, with the recommendation in case anyone else is looking for one. :)

God Our Mother By Allison Woodard To be a Mother is to suffer; To travail in the dark, stretched and torn, exposed in half-naked humiliation, subjected to indignities for the sake of new life. To be a Mother is to say, “This is my body, broken for you,” And, in the next instant, in response to the created’s primal hunger, “This is my body, take and eat.” To be a Mother is to self-empty, To neither slumber nor sleep, so attuned You are to cries in the night— Offering the comfort of Yourself, and assurances of “I’m here.” To be a Mother is to weep over the fighting and exclusions and wounds your children inflict on one another; To long for reconciliation and brotherly love and—when all is said and done— To gather all parties, the offender and the offended, into the folds of your embrace and to whisper in their ears that they are Beloved. To be a mother is to be vulnerable— To be misunderstood, Railed against, Blamed For the heartaches of the bewildered children who don’t know where else to cast the angst they feel over their own existence in this perplexing universe To be a mother is to hoist onto your hips those on whom your image is imprinted, bearing the burden of their weight, rejoicing in their returned affection, delighting in their wonder, bleeding in the presence of their pain. To be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality one moment, And injustice the next. To be the Receiver of endless demands, Absorber of perpetual complaints, Reckoner of bottomless needs. To be a mother is to be an artist; A keeper of memories past, Weaver of stories untold, Visionary of lives looming ahead. To be a mother is to be the first voice listened to, And the first disregarded; To be a Mender of broken creations, And Comforter of the distraught children whose hands wrought them. To be a mother is to be a Touchstone and the Source, Bestower of names, Influencer of identities; Life giver, Life shaper, Empath, Healer, and Original Love.

Not sure if it’s a poem, but this speech from maira kalman “women holding things” https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGpsTcctwee/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Meditation By the Stove I have banked the fires of my body into a small but steady blaze here in the kitchen where the dough has a life of its own, breathing under its damp cloth like a sleeping child; where the real child plays under the table, pretending the tablecloth is a tent, practicing departures; where a dim brown bird dazzled by light has flown into the windowpane and lies stunned on the pavement— it was never simple, even for birds, this business of nests. The innocent eye sees nothing, Auden says, repeating what the snake told Eve, what Eve told Adam, tired of gardens, wanting the fully lived life. But passion happens like an accident I could let the dough spill over the rim of the bowl, neglecting to punch it down, neglecting the child who waits under the table, the mild tears already smudging her eyes. We grow in such haphazard ways. Today I feel wiser than the bird. I know the window shuts me in, that when I open it the garden smells will make me restless. And I have banked the fires of my body into a small domestic flame for others to warm their hands on for a while. by Linda Pastan

Good Bones by Maggie Smith. My breath catches in my throat every time I read it. Especially in times like these, when I’m filled with worry about the world I’ve brought my children into. There is fear but there is always hope. There has to b be. Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

I have never shared a poem of my own, but here it goes… Mama Bear Be brave. I scream inside. But I must silently scream since both children are sound asleep, rosy with warm dreams. The pounding sound is getting louder and louder, I realize, it is not a squirrel in the roof, nor man at the door, but a large black bear. As I run to the glass door in the living room armed with nothing but a dim flashlight, I see her silhouette, vertical, massive, and black as the night sky. I have just a few more minutes before she can smash through, and send a shattering plate of glass on our wood floors. I throw on the lights, and make myself look big. bigger than my 5 foot 2 body seems. I yell at her, “Go on, get out of here” and she stumbles down the deck stairs and waddles away under the deck leaving some puddles of drool and her formidable paw prints. I sit up straight in bed wondering what next. My son comes in thirsty for water and comments on how awake I seem. “Can I snuggle in your bed?” he asks. Of course, I will keep you safe.

It’s really nice to acknowledge those of us who have dead mothers! What a relief.

Here’s a poem I wrote yesterday, for my children on Mothers Day: It’s fine, it’s no big deal Just my heart walking around Outside my body while My eyes dart every second to Check, is it ok Changing a world I longed to know, taking air I thought I’d need. Turns out it’s better this way: This deep inhale, these beautiful souls It’s them who gave me a life, It’s me they taught to breathe. – Sholeh Drackett More of my poems on @undonelovely on Instagram ☺️ My joyful little project that has truly given me life this last year. A place for my truth to live outside of my body ❤️

My favorite, for thirty years: To A Sad Daughter Michael Ondaatje All night long the hockey pictures gaze down at you sleeping in your tracksuit. Belligerent goalies are your ideal. Threats of being traded cuts and wounds –all this pleases you. O my god! you say at breakfast reading the sports page over the Alpen as another player breaks his ankle or assaults the coach. When I thought of daughters I wasn’t expecting this but I like this more. I like all your faults even your purple moods when you retreat from everyone to sit in bed under a quilt. And when I say ‘like’ I mean of course ‘love’ but that embarrasses you. You who feel superior to black and white movies (coaxed for hours to see Casablanca) though you were moved by Creature from the Black Lagoon. One day I’ll come swimming beside your ship or someone will and if you hear the siren listen to it. For if you close your ears only nothing happens. You will never change. I don’t care if you risk your life to angry goalies creatures with webbed feet. You can enter their caves and castles their glass laboratories. Just don’t be fooled by anyone but yourself. This is the first lecture I’ve given you. You’re ‘sweet sixteen’ you said. I’d rather be your closest friend than your father. I’m not good at advice you know that, but ride the ceremonies until they grow dark. Sometimes you are so busy discovering your friends I ache with loss –but that is greed. And sometimes I’ve gone into my purple world and lost you. One afternoon I stepped into your room. You were sitting at the desk where I now write this. Forsythia outside the window and sun spilled over you like a thick yellow miracle as if another planet was coaxing you out of the house –all those possible worlds!– and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics. I cannot look at forsythia now without loss, or joy for you. You step delicately into the wild world and your real prize will be the frantic search. Want everything. If you break break going out not in. How you live your life I don’t care but I’ll sell my arms for you, hold your secrets forever. If I speak of death which you fear now, greatly, it is without answers. Except that each one we know is in our blood. Don’t recall graves. Memory is permanent. Remember the afternoon’s yellow suburban annunciation. Your goalie in his frightening mask dreams perhaps of gentleness.

This one always busts my heart wide open: Song for a Fifth Child by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton Mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth! Empty the dustpan, poison the moth, Hang out the washing and butter the bread, Sew on a button and make up a bed. Where is the mother whose house is so shocking? She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking! Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby, loo). Dishes are waiting and bills are past due (Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo). The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo. Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue? (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.) Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow, But children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow. So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep. I’m rocking my baby. Babies don’t keep.

I’ve been rereading this over and over since I first read it on Mother’s Day from @rachelbeachywrites Mothers Carrying Things by Rachel Beachy We begin by carrying the car seat, the diaper bag, the pump parts and pacifiers. Then they grow and bring us collected rocks, Lego blocks, remains of snacks, dirty tissues. All of this, we take in so they will know: whatever you hand to me, I can handle – no matter how heavy it gets. I once carried my whole world in the crook of my elbow. There is nothing I cannot hold for you.

Good Bones Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. Maggie Smith

I love this healing poem and instructions to live a profound life. I share this with mamas going through a rough time or my sweet babies when they need some extra tenderness. “Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds. Heal yourself with mint, with neem and eucalyptus. Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile. Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon. Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain. Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it. Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead. Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier. Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.” Maria Sabina, 🇲🇽 poet and curandera (healer)

With my father we used to play the same game – that I won the Nobel-prize in biology, a subject I really hated as a high schooler. He died on this day 33 years ago. I was 18. I can’t stop crying.

One lovely poetry collection is Morning Song: Poems for New Parents. It’s out of print, but I hunt down copies on eBay for baby showers! So many good ones in there.

Not a poem, but this passage from Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng kills me again and again and again. ‘Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there was something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare—a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug—and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.’

I usually narrate my makeup routine to my kiddos while they play along and this morning told them, “it’s no mascara Monday.” My husband asked what I was talking about. And I responded that it was post Mother’s Day CoJ posting day and I would likely be misty. I was correct.

I heard Billy Collins read that poem aloud many years ago and it was even more moving live ❤️

Oh my heart! These remind me of the song Alma by säje (it won a grammy this spring!) – the lyrics begin: “Love me, hold nothing above me, and want nothing of me, all you have is mine. Oh see me, be the ground beneath me, and the tree that feeds me, just to watch me shine.” ❤️

Ok, here’s a poem I wrote. Forthythia My mom was the kind of mom who hailed each yellow yawp above Toronto’s sticks and slush. “Forthythia!” She preferred the rendering of my clumsy young tongue. It meant: Springtime! It meant: Relief! It meant: We are alive I buried her under a forsythia. Now she is the celebration reaching into the Spring air.

This one always, always makes me cry. The Raincoat Ada Limón When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine unspooled a bit, I could breathe again, and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole forty-five minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty- five minutes back from physical therapy. She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang, because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me, or how her day was before this chore. Today, at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment, singing along to some maudlin but solid song on the radio, and I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.

to live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go Mary Oliver The letting go. Begins the day they are born, and never stops. Every second, every day, a little farther from once being an actual piece of your body. A piece that walks away, sails away, flies away. Your heart in pieces, far far from you.

So many poems by Carrie Fountain but especially “Eating the Avocado” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89655/eating-the-avocado

The real tearjerker for me is Billy Collins’ “On Turning Ten.” It’s a must read for every mother.

This is beautiful. This is your blog, so do with it what you will :) but as my kids are aging, I’m noticing how many parenting pics are of parents with tiny kiddos — babies, toddlers, squishy bodies. I would love to see more parenting pics of parents with bigger kids. It feels like such a different experience in so many ways to having little tiny ones. I love when you share your adventures with your own boys, Joanna. No need to act on this, just sharing what came to my mind today. Thank you for always providing such a beautiful, warm corner of the internet!

People often remember Sylvia Plath for her angriest, saddest poetry and moments of her life, but I’ve always loved this pregnancy poem of hers: You’re Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools’ Day, O high-riser, my little loaf. Vague as fog and looked for like mail. Farther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn. Snug as a bud and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels, all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican bean. Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on.

These all so beautifully capture motherhood! My daughter (10) asked me last night (Mother’s Dat) when I was putting her to bed if becoming a mom was scary. I answered her honestly and unwaveringly- it’s terrifying but oh so glorious!

Sentimental Moment by Robert Hershon always takes hold of my heart. I also love I Hope That My Daughter Uses Her Voice by Kiara Whittle.

“Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?” Don’t fill up on bread I say absent-mindedly The servings here are huge My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says Did you really just say that to me? What he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, when we get to the curb I sometimes start to reach for his hand —Robert Hershon

These are so beautiful, so tender. I have begun to feel ready to become a mother; it is pulling at me. I have frequent dreams about it. But my husband says he isn’t ready. We have a fantastic partnership, and I know we would be caring, thoughtful parents. But without his full enthusiasm I feel a bit isolated and I worry it will never happen…

For all the mothers who are loving their children in the midst of genocide, famine, war, poverty “We Were Young, You Gave Us a Home” by Maya Abu Al-Hayatt A child’s hand sticks out of the rubble and sends me counting my three children’s limbs, their digits, examining their teeth and eyebrows. The silenced voices in Yarmouk turn the volume up on my radio, TV, and drown the songs on my laptop. I pinch my kids in their love handles: let there be crying, let there be noise. And the hungry hearts at Qalandia checkpoint open my mouth: I’m ready for my extra salty emotional eating to feed weeping eyes everywhere.

little astronaut by J. Hope Stein a newborn rests her head on the earth of mother. everything else is outer space.

Tears in my eyes as I read these. I also love The Raincoat by Ada Calhoun, The Language of the Brag by Sharon Olds and Stitches by Maggie Smith. Motherhood can be so bittersweet and poetry captures it so well.

Tears. How beautifully did they capture the tender sweetness, heart ache, joys of motherhood and childhood?

Stunning beauty in each of these.

Not a mom (yet), but am currently weeping in the airport while reading the Maya Angelou poem. Thank you for posting this.

I love Kate Baer’s poem “Childhood”. Also, “First Fall” by Maggie Smith

Oh gee, Billy Collins’ Lanyard poem gets me every time. It’s such a sweet mixture of humorous and heart-warming. I always well up when I read it and wish it had another stanza or two. I have never come across that Maya Angelou poem. It was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Signed, an extremely sentimental mom, especially so following a delightful Mother’s Day spent with my elementary-aged children & husband.

“The Raincoat” by Ada Limón. Just sent my kiddo back over to his father’s, after a really beautiful Mother’s Day together, and this morning is a struggle.

I read Grace Paley’s “For My Daughter” while scrolling through Instagram (on the Poetry Is Not a Luxury account!) a week after my daughter was born. It hit me hard then and still hits now, three years later: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8sVbODypNi/

Not a motherhood book, but I wanted to plug author Clint Smith’s poetry collection, Above Ground. It’s a beautiful meditation on parenthood and being in love with your family. I give it as a gift to every parent I know. People may know Clint Smith from his excellent nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed.

These are so moving. I guessed “The Raincoat” by Ada Limon would be on there, but I was glad to read two that were new to me. :’)

So beautiful, all of them! Ada Limon’s “The Raincoat” always does me in, too. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/160713/the-raincoat When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine unspooled a bit, I could breathe again, and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole forty-five-minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty- five minutes back from physical therapy. She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang, because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me, or how her day was before this chore. Today, at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment, singing along to some maudlin but solid song on the radio, and I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.

My favorite right now is ‘Things That Will Never Be the Same’ by Lyndsay Rush (aka Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin). My kiddos are 22 and 25 and parenting young adults in this world may be the hardest stage yet. Things That Will Never Be the Same My bellybutton / my boobs / my nervous system / my literal DNA (thanks, microchimerism) / my ribcage / my hairline / The way I look at the news / the way I look at your dad / the way I look at my mother / the way I look at myself / Your favorites / your fears / how much or how little you need / Us / My mindfulness of sharp corners / and stairs / and cords / and allergens / and school districts / and time / What I lose sleep over / what I lose patience over / what I google / over and over and over / The word blowout / and all-nighter / and nap / and bottle / and bubble bath / The funny assumption that my heart has reached peak fullness / only to discover / it grew / overnight / neck and neck / with you.

Sorry for the poor copy and pasting…..!

This is about a father, but applies equally to all parents: Those Winter Sundays Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Tumblr View print mode Copy embed code Add this poem to an anthology Load audio player Robert Hayden 1913 – 1980 Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

All so beautiful. I saw our poet laureate Ada Limon read this in person, and gosh, is there anything more moving than hearing the poet read their own work? WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE was how horses simply give birth to other horses. Not a baby by any means, not a creature of liminal spaces, but already a four-legged beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way to another horse and then suddenly there are two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you. You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two computers swinging in it unwieldily at your side. I remember we broke into laughter when we saw each other. What was between us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.