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 distills 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.
Guiding Questions:
1. Comment on the reactions of the
mother to the newborn baby. How do these differ to the reactions we might
expect?
2. Examine the similes and metaphors
used to describe the baby. What do these tell us?
3. Why might the title of the poem be
significant?
4. What do the poet’s descriptions of
herself reveal to us?