Motherhood

Quote

Poem

“I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.”

Morning Song

“One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral / In my Victorian nightgown.”

Morning Song

“My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; / Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.”

Tulips

“Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.”

Tulips

“Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. / Nor the woman in the ambulance / Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly”

Poppies in October

“A gift, a love gift / Utterly unasked for”

Poppies in October

“O my God, what am I / That these late mouths should cry open”

Poppies in October

“I am a miner. The light burns blue.”

Nick and the Candlestick

“Wrap me, raggy shawls”

Nick and the Candlestick

“Love, love, / I have hung our cave with roses, /With soft rugs– / The last of Victoriana.”

Nick and the Candlestick

“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, / White as a knuckle and terribly upset.”

The Moon and the Yew Tree

“It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet / With the O-gape of complete despair”

The Moon and the Yew Tree

“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.

/ Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”

The Moon and the Yew Tree

“The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.”

The Moon and the Yew Tree

“The child’s cry / Melts in the wall.”

Ariel

‘Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children. /Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb”

The Munich Mannequins

“Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose. / The blood flood is the flood of love”

The Munich Mannequins

“What is so real as the cry of a child? / A rabbit’s cry may be wilder / But it has no soul”

Kindness

“You hand me two children, two roses.”

Kindness

“And these travelling / Globes of thin air, red, green,