Mother Words

Mother’s wrist: Pain from picking up

Babywearing: Walking for silence

Dreamfeed: Nurse at midnight to miss the sunrise

Self-soothing: Bliss in separation

Side-lying: Unable to sit

Bedsharing: Because I am alone with him

Weaning: Because I don't want to be

Christianity: A grieving mother asked God for her baby back

Mother Nature: Because I said so

Mother’s Wrist

To wake up without hands.

To tingle where fingers were.

My wrist reminds me of itself

with a persistent whisper:

You can’t keep giving yourself like this,

I’m going to cut you off.

Elbows

My entire fortune

rests between my elbows.

Arms up and it’s my thoughts.

Arms down and it’s my fruit,

the color of my son’s hair.

What color is that?

It hurts to search for the words.

That’s how poor of a painter and writer I am.

My entire fortune out of grasp of my mouth.

My elbows bent

with words in them

I do not understand.

Totality

We don’t need to look.

A mother knows

what an eclipse is.

You felt it the birth-minute:

Totality.

It’s the first time someone says,

“He’s beautiful, but how are you?”

and you look up bewildered,

squinting and smiling at the voice.

Walla Walla Sunrise

He's brought me to

the door of dawn

along with

a handful of birds.

The little cedar waxwings,

and my son,

are both stretching hungry mouths

towards a navy sky.

And me, I'm trying

to beat the sun

at its own game.

Giving life

to all of this majesty.

A strip of pale yellow

below the stars.

Sleep-Swim

This vessel loves

just by virtue of holding.

I am walking around

holding my hand above him

while he sleeps,

while he swims.

I can feel his foot

slide from my heart

to my hip.

Like a lollipop

in a cheek,

or like the moon slides

and then melts

into the sea.

His little hands press

into my stomach,

stopping at a rib.

Love ripples out from that pause,

like water around lilies.

Like an afternoon nap.

Oh, to live

in a loving place!

Imagine the bed

loves us for moving.

Imagine the sheets

grateful for restless feet.

Imagine the earth

pressing back into our knees

when we pray,

humming to us through the clouds,

the ocean holding each boat.

Sleep-Smile

My father

a few steps after death,

after the last breath

had that same little smile.

The one that’s uncurling

on my son’s sleeping face.

It says “I am swimming in the stars.”

His cold little fists punch the air,

legs squirm as if full of wind.

As if he is a container too small

for all those wild ancestors

from Prussia,

Oklahoma,

Cheng-du.

Miracle

Every birth place

is a miracle.

It turns mothers

into willow trees branches.

Green tufts reaching to the water,

just to get closer

to see themselves grow.

For the sun,

for the hummingbirds.

Growing for the bench and the lake.

My fingertips touch each other

in worship of myself.

Nice Day

How nice of the day

to brighten so slowly!

The earth knows

how long it takes us

to wake up.

Or is it that our eyelids

have thickened

against thousands of years

of waking too soon?

The sun is

warm milk and honey

pressed against the black-pink

of our closed eyes.

A welcome

white-flood

when we open.

Good Morning, Son.

My Baby

The place before.

The place after

life.

Before,

he was with my father

who said

there are two kinds of people in this world;

artists and butchers.

After,

he is with me,

in the space

where our spirits

rub together,

like soap sliding between fingers:

stardust and slime.

Love is always given

with smiles and hands.

Motherhood

Scoop a pearl from your gut

hand it to the world.

A pregnant pause

creates.

An ice cube melted under my belly button.

No. It’s the ghost of an organ.

To feel so old and so new.

To build just by sleeping and eating.

The universe was born,

has a mother.

She was a void

or maybe a bang.

Either way,

we are sisters now.

First Sky

The chain link pattern of my necklace is

gold-pressed against the peach of your temple.

An imprint of your face

sits on my chest

like a wet red leaf.

The fresh shine of green leaves is

rustling at the blue sky for the first time,

new to reflections of sunlight,

just like you.

Empty

Lincoln Center

after Handel’s Messiah.

Everyone is gone,

but there is still a buzz in the air.

The last person to look at the stage

felt it,

still.

Place your hand

on this empty womb.

Blue

A perfect steak

charred on the outside

inside

blue

My flesh makes men

it separated

made

room

Carrying

Every gourd

was fruit-full

once.

Everyone

is carrying love

like a luscious

complicated

pomegranate.

Maybe

I was a melon

before I was

emptied.

Before I was freed

from the service

of sweetness

and entered

the service

of thirst.

Bone Polish

My patience was polished

for you.

Deep breaths in traffic,

missed calls and trains,

bleeding feet,

frozen hands:

All waves over stone for you.

When your wails split the night deep

into trembling fragments.

I gather them with steady hands.

My bones know to be heavy and still,

made of marble,

smooth like headstones.

Hold me together

while you grow.

Beach Day

I am putting my baby down

for a nap he doesn’t want.

My wrists are swollen,

my head juts out from a strained neck.

I feel like a turkey stuck in a bear trap.

I offer my breasts and my hands,

pleading with my all my body has to offer:

Go to sleep!

His groans burn the inside of my eyelids.

I close my eyes harder against him.

I want to be on the beach.

I pretend the highway sounds are waves.

The pain spots are maybe where the sun is burning too hot,

I let it roast my face, knees and shoulders,

my stomach and thighs.

I want the breeze dragging the oak leaves across the gravel

to be my fingers dragging and dropping shells and sand,

For no reason at all.

I open my eyes

at the thought of empty hands.

Abraham

A melody spins out of the wind,

a sound springs from thoughts.

It came to be while walking my dog

in the hills behind Berkeley.

I found it on the ground,

between the sword fern and some bear grass.

It was a hoarse whistle at first,

Almost had to press my cheek to the wet earth

just to hear it.

Then the hums rose ‘round me like steam.

Once he had a name,

he also had a song.

Writing While Nursing

If I’m not writing underwater,

I’m writing when I’m nursing.

It’s the sweetest way to be trapped.

Thoughts run wild, while limbs run still.

Have you heard the one about the boy in Russia?

He could remember everything.

In Siberia they had no books, no pencils.

The school children were taught to attach memories to objects.

One time, he couldn’t remember something.

Everyone was shocked.

It turns out, he couldn’t see the memory hiding in plain sight.

It was on a white egg sitting on a white mantle.

Once he saw it, he remembered.

I put a poem on one of my son’s toys.

I ran to my computer as soon as I saw his palm

cup the plastic handle.

This poem spent all night attached to the kitchen sponge.

I didn’t see it this morning, or even just now.

I thought ”I should do the dishes”

and that’s when I remembered:

Poems are work,

the words need to be coaxed out.

Babies are work,

their teeth come slow,

need consoling.

River

I came here often

before I became a bride,

a mother.

I came for the cool in the redwoods,

the folded shadows under each fern.

Came for the sweet inky blackness

between their fingers.

The path is changed now

by some felled trees,

by many steps

not my own.

I follow a foot path

I’ve never seen

to a new ravine

cut deep

by an absent river.

I look down

in recognition of that feeling,

when something enormous

has flowed through you.

I take my hat off and take it in,

bowing almost.

I feel both darker and emptier.

The river is mother

to a thousand flowers,

bobbing obliviously downstream.

Twenty Parent Poems