It’s Mother’s Day here in the UK and as well as yesterday’s flowers and having No 1 Daughter here for breakfast, a special treat, there were cards and phone calls. I am a very lucky Mum.
I wanted to give you a poem today, for all Mums, with us or not and whom we honour with our gratitude and our love. This poem by Sylvia Plath is a reminder of the early days of Motherhood and I love its opening line –
” Love set you going like a fat gold watch”, the sense of “moth breath” which so catches the delicacy of a new-born’s breathing and the way the baby’s voice has “clear vowels” which “rise like balloons,” reminiscent for me of all four of ours.
Here is Morning Song by Sylvia Plath.
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cryTook its place among the elements.Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.In a drafty museum, your nakednessShadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.I’m no more your motherThan the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slowEffacement at the wind’s hand.All night your moth-breathFlickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:A far sea moves in my ear.One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floralIn my Victorian nightgown.Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window squareWhitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you tryYour handful of notes;The clear vowels rise like balloons.
The Blackbirds have now eaten all the seedy pastry I put out for them. I need to make some more.
Blackbird in the feeding house
Here is my link to Soulful Sunday . Thank you Mindful Gardener for the meme.
