Today, a short note of appreciation for the mother-poets and poets-of-motherhood who have so incomparably enhanced my experience of being a mom.

This poem comes from Carrie Fountain’s collection “The Life,” the gift on Mother’s Day 2021 from Hannah Smith that arguably started the #wordcoloredglasses journey.

“I’ll get back to the poem” - Tess Gallagher

…but before I do: I’ve newly discovered I’m pregnant. It’s far too early (by certain standards) to tell anyone. But from my perspective, this chapter of human experience – when you’re viscerally gripped by hormones but far from guaranteed a child - is terribly obscured.

Spring transformed my birdfeeder into a marvel: molted finches, two bluebirds-in-residence, a cardinal peeking from the pines.

My son internalizes my fascination. Every morning he checks on his “friends,” smudging the window with kisses. One of his first words? “CHICK-a-dee.”

The first ¾ of Limón’s poem describes the gift of noticing - that transformation from “Blah blah blah bird” to a nuanced awareness of nature’s rotation around and beyond us (“Grackle party!...Tufted titmouse!”).

It's been a quiet week recovering from illness & reflecting on a year of vertiginous flux.

“Shelter” consoles me, celebrating change without sanitizing pain.

I first fell for poetry’s sounds; “Spellbound” was an early love. A teenager, I’d chant it while stomping through the twilight wastelands of frigid New Hampshire.

Perhaps because I was walking, the 3 iambs per line (“the NIGHT is DARKening ROUND me”) resolved into 2 undulating beats (“the NIGHT is darkening ROUND me”–video 3 for a reading; 4 for discussion).

A specific kind of prayer this Sunday…

✨

Sandburg doesn’t pray for his own intervention, but to become an instrument of intervention.

On partnership

✨

It’s midnight and I’ve only just gotten up from work. The house is blessedly quiet. We’re hosting my husband’s colleagues, and it’s chaos (though I love them, truly). It reminds me of the bad old days when we were freshly out of college, full of new initiatives, hosting friends and coworkers every other week.

On Keeping On

Like waves on the shore – another Monday! As I walked along the local coastline, catching my breath before the week, “Ebb and Flow” came to mind…

This poem captures the constant waver (WAVEr) between confidence and insecurity, and I like the way it shows how our mindsets filter the world around us. Neither waves (stanzas 1 + 2) nor heartbeats (stanzas 3 + 4) have much of an opinion about our dreams. But an insecure mind finds detractors in every corner, just like an optimistic mind projects encouragement onto its surroundings.

On allowing darkness its appointed hour…

Last night was my first night home alone with Little Man (husband back later this morning).

I never really got over my childhood night terrors. Even grown, I would sit rigid in bed, flashlight on, pure adrenaline in my veins.

But last night I was tired after a day well lived; Little Man was sleeping, and the echo of his sound machine soothed me, too, accustomed as I am to it. My home was warm. I got to listen by the door as 4 (!) nests of baby birds settled down on our porch.

On the universe’s engine

**

I first read “Maybe the Milky Way” when my son was an infant, thrilled and awed by the prospect that one day he would be a little person, able to engage both me and the world. I had tasted enough of motherhood’s wonders to believe it possible, but couldn’t fathom the road ahead.

On mindset

*

@kasia.shopov thank you for this submission! At dawn, Little Man wanted to dance to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” on repeat ** I wasn’t exactly feeling the glory of sunrise…

… until I re-read Oliver’s words. What magic is poetry! Shaping AND capturing reality *

I first thought Oliver represented sunrise as intrinsically enjoyable. Closer consideration of the poem’s symmetry, however, reveals why sunrise is transformative for the soul:

“The Falls” by @mohnslate is a rich investigation of life as a woman/creator/mother/wife/person (not necessarily in that order).

After reading it, I found Little Man a total mess. He has three teeth coming in, and on top of the pain he was HUNGRY. But he didn’t want to eat. Because he was mad and in pain. Made worse because he was hungry. Etc.

I had initially found this poem charming (more on that, below!). But, by wanting two contradictory things at once, Little Man reminded me of its very human stakes.