30 Day Book Challenge: Day Twelve
Day Twelve: A book that is most like your life
I don’t think I’ve read a story that’s quite like the roller-coaster ride this life has taken me on so far, but there’s a poem in Silvia Plath’s that speaks so powerfully and emotionally about newborn life and how it makes you feel as a new parent that I had to include it here.
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers 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 floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Photo credits: Pile of books by Felixco, Inc. at freedigitalphotos.net.
