As it’s Mother’s Day in the UK on Sunday, this week's poem is for all the mothers out there and anyone who cares for another.
As I say in my recently published poetry book, Circle of Life, “mother” is a verb as well as a noun. We all, male and female, have the capacity to mother others.
And we can each mother ourselves.
This is a lullaby not for a child but for a mother. It's one of the twelve poems in my Mother's Day gift book.
Read it aloud… and slowly.
The Mother’s Lullaby Whisper to yourself your names for your children or child. Let those soft sounds sound in your mouth like the hiss of sands kissing water in the undertow of the tide. Shush. Let their names so heart-chosen, mean all they mean. Kiss them as they cross the lips of your understanding to offset the spasms of the birth the ache in the arms the fears of the leaving. Shush. Let them offer the hope you find hard to hope now for yourself: to walk in wonder, veiled in the memory of the gods, feeling the pull of their old, soft sound on the soul, held in play with the call of the world. Shush. Whisper to yourself your names for your children or child.
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