Blooming Within Me
Three Poems for Mother's Day
Freight Maura Dooley I am the ship in which you sail, little dancing bones, your passage between the dream and the waking dream, your sieve, your pea-green boat. I’ll pay whatever toll your ferry needs. And you, whose history’s already charted in a rope of cells, be tender to those other unnamed vessels who will surprise you one day, tug-tugging, irresistible, and float you out beyond your depth, where you’ll look down, puzzled, amazed. Now That I Am Forever With Child Audre Lorde How the days went while you were blooming within me I remember each upon each the swelling changed planes of my body how you first fluttered then jumped and I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down and the turning of winter I recall you growing heavy against the wind. I thought now her hands are formed her hair has started to curl now her teeth are done now she sneezes. Then the seed opened. I bore you one morning just before spring my head rang like a fiery piston my legs were towers between which a new world was passing. Since then I can only distinguish one thread within running hours you flowing through selves toward You. Mother of the Groom Seamus Heaney What she remembers Is his glistening back In the bath, his small boots in the ring of boots at her feet. Hands in her voided lap, she hears a daughter welcomed. It’s as if he kicked when lifted and slipped her soapy hold. Once soap would ease off the wedding ring that’s bedded forever now in her clapping hand.
All of these poems can be found in the Everyman Pocket Library Series Motherhood book, which I highly recommend.