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 (1977- ), American poet and mother, first published in Waxwing journal, 2016.

Ascension

It wasn’t just wind, chasing
thin gunmetal clouds
across the loud sky;
it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend
on that excited air,
rising like a trumpet note.

And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking,
her crying out,
the downward draw of blood and bone….

It was all of that,
the mud and new grass
pushing up through melting snow,
the lilac in bud
by my front door, bent low
by last week’s ice storm.

Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,
begins to nurse her child,
beginning the long good-bye.


--Kathleen Norris (1947- ), Benedictine oblate , poet, and essayist

if mama/ could see

if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up
that reflect odd
aspects of lucy.

if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining
to obscure gods.

if mama
could talk
she would talk
good girl
good girl
good girl

clean up your room.


-- Lucille Clifton, 1936-2010, African American poet, children's book author, Maryland's Poet Laureate 1974-1985, and professor, from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980.

My Second Birth

That first birth
when I pushed myself
free of her
and burst out
into invisible air
is as lost to me
as the months I floated
in that ocean of unbroken thought.

But passing on
the birth she gave me
has made me see Mama
face to face.

I understand now
what she means when she says
she loves me:
It's the place you get to
when you've pushed
to the other side of pain.

A light grew in my belly
until my husband
could warm his hands by it.
I gave our son my broken sleep,
the fists, hands, fists, hands, fists
I made when he woke me
from my dream about his name.

I gave birth to him awed
by his apple-round head
in the bright glass above my knees.
I was given new strength
when he crowned
and my blood burst
like a chain of jewels
around his neck.

Mama 
was my first image of God.
I remember how she leaned over my crib,
her eyes full of sky.

--Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet, translator, and children's. book author, from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, 1997.



Photo: My mom and my siblings, ca 1970. I am on the left, sucking my thumb and having been forced to relinquish my spot on her lap to the interlopers.

Magnificat

THIS is Christ's birthday: long ago
He lay upon His Mother's knee,
Who kissed and blessed Him soft and low--
God's gift to her, as you to me.

My baby dear, my little one,
The love that rocks this cradling breast
Is such as Mary gave her Son:
She was more honoured, not more blest.

He smiled as you smile: not more sweet
Than your eyes were those eyes of His,
And just such little hands and feet
As yours Our Lady used to kiss.

The world's desire that Mother bore:
She held a King upon her knee:
O King of all my world, and more
Than all the world's desire to me!

I thank God on the Christmas morn,
For He has given me all things good:
This body which a child has borne,
This breast, made holy for his food.

High in high heaven Our Lady's throne
Beside her Son's stands up apart:
I sit on heaven's steps alone
And hold my king against my heart.

Across dark depths she hears your cry;
She sees your smile, through worlds of blue
Who was a mother, even as I,
And loved her Child, as I love you.

And to her heart my babe is dear,
Because she bore the Babe Divine,
And all my soul to hers draws near,
And loves Him for the sake of mine!

--Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), English poet

Image: Choctaw Madonna and Child, icon, by Fr. John Giuliani

The Lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the 'L' section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that's what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white   
    lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her 
    with a lanyard.
'Here are thousands of meals' she said,
'and here is clothing and a good education.'
'And here is your lanyard,' I replied,
'which I made with a little help from a counselor.'
'Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the 
    world.' she whispered.
'And here,' I said, 'is the lanyard I made at camp.'
'And here,' I wish to say to her now,
'is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned 
    lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.'

--Billy Collins (1941- ), US poet laureate 2001-2003

The Edge

The edge?     The edge is:
lie by the breath you cannot
do without; while
the breather sleeps.

Precious, subtle, that air
comes, goes, comes.
The heart propels it.     It has
its thousands of hours, but

it will not last as long
as the sun, the moon's subservient
tides. It will stop, go back
to the great air's surround.

But now, subtle, precious,
regular as tide and sun
it moves in the warm body, lifts
the chest, says yes.

Listen to it, through the night.
If you wish to know the extent
to which you are vulnerable,
only listen.

This is called the breath
of life.     But it continues
saving your life
through the dark,

since this engine that drives your joy
is unrenounceable.
Listen, listen.     Say, Love, love
breathe so, breathe so.

--Josephine Jacobsen (1908-2003), US poet laureate 1971-1973


Photo: my three children when they were small, February 2000.

A mother's prayer

May you always be
a strong arm to the weak;
and may you always be
a comfort to the crying;
a smile to the lonely,
a blessing to the grieving;
and may you always be
a haven for the anxious.

May your life be full of Jesus
and His love;
may you be God-driven by the
Father and the Spirit;
and may you be His hands
and smile
and be His arms of comfort.
And may you always be
His blessing to the world.
Amen.

--Neil and Gerlinde Kennedy-Jones and Andrew M. Seddon, from Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2, from the Northumbria Community. p. 1090

A prayer of Dame Julian of Norwich

In you, Father all-mighty, we have
     our preservation and our bliss.
In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving.
You are our mother, brother, and Saviour.
In you, our Lord the Holy Spirit,
     is marvellous and plenteous grace.
You are our clothing; for love you wrap us
     and embrace us.
You are our maker, our lover, our keeper.
Teach us to believe that by your grace
     all shall be well,
     and all shall be well,
     and all manner of thing shall be well.
AMEN.

-- Dame Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)