Barbara Crooker and her second born
NEWBORN by Barbara Crooker
Soft as a warm bun,
you rise in your basket:
your yeasty breath,
sweet as morning;
your face, a road map
about to be traveled;
your eyes, clean as the rain:
nothing on this earth is quite so new—
first published in McCall’s
Two poems by Mary Ellen Talley
Meeting Taylor Kathleen
peach baby
wrapped in the new year
spitting breast milk
to settle digestion.
warm baby
wrapped in sunset
jostled by fire works
gnawing on mama’s knuckles.
noisy baby
wrapped in a swing
rhythmic lulling
from a pulsing breeze.
new baby
wrapped in a mother
swallowing at the breast
hunger and calm.
wet baby
unwrapped for a diaper
cooing the face above
in the dry breeze.
safe baby
wrapped in a harness
facing forward
eyes wide before nodding to sleep.
His smile entertains and he is clueless.
Bundle the babe in his brother’s gifted blankets.
The ultra sound proclaims the splendid embryo.
Big brother Cayden and baby Taylor
A Sentimental Pantoum
The ultra sound proclaims the splendid embryo.
Your son announces, “I’m the big brother.”
His smile entertains and he is clueless.
Life will topsy-turvy ebb and flow.
Your son announces, “I’m the big brother.”
Magic beckons, the zygote divides to grant a wish.
Life will topsy-turvy ebb and flow,
This baby will take over your tomorrow.
Magic beckons, the zygote divides to grant a wish.
Nausea and back pain know little comfort.
This baby will take over your tomorrow.
Nausea will splurge, medicate, eradicate, and eat.
Nausea and back pain know little comfort.
Some new body frolics in a placenta.
Nausea will splurge, medicate, eradicate, and eat.
While mother rocks great grandpa’s oaken cradle.
Some new body frolics in a placenta.
Bundle the babe in his brother’s gifted blankets.
While mother rocks great grandpa’s oaken cradle.
Big brother will hear of his own dear birth.
Big brother will hear of his own dear birth.
Judith Waller Carroll’s twin grandchildren, Jack and Tova Jaffee
Early Morning with Newborn Twins by Judith Waller Carroll
I will miss this comfortable chaos:
tee-shirts the size of lace handkerchiefs
scattered over the sofa, a bottle resting
on the arm of a chair, the carpet cluttered
with baby seats, a wind-up swing, hand-knit blankets
in pink and blue, my daughter in the midst of it,
her face a blend of joy and exhaustion.
It is my shift now and she staggers
back to bed, while I wash bottles,
make myself tea, wander into the nursery again
to watch them sleep.
My love for them is an intense form of curiosity.
I am captivated by each perfect finger and toe,
the curve of his brow, a wisp of hair
on her forehead. I search each random smile,
twitch of an eye for clues to their past
and their future. Meanwhile, the red sun edges
over the fire escape and light slowly fills
the window. Another day begins.
From Walking in Early September
Lori Levy and her grandson
ADDICTED by Lori Levy
To moments like this:
the air, the garden, the back of his head
against my cheek, so soft
I could sit here all day,
my lips taking me
again and again
to Cookie Pie, Sweetie Pea.
Grandson.
His whole body speaks trust,
discovery, eyes wide with bird song,
wind chimes, squirrel on a wire.
He eats the world with his gaze,
wants it all—leaves,
old bench with peeling wood,
stucco wall, me.
I hold him in my arms, filling so fast
I must tilt and pour.
He smiles, streams it all back.
I revel in this flow. Like an addict,
I just can’t get enough.
Sonnet at one hour old
Sonnet my Sixth Great Granddaughter by Sharon Waller Knutson
Sings Like a songbird
and kicks like a dancer
as she is born a beauty
with creamy smooth skin.
Two years earlier,
my grandson
and his girlfriend
named her brother Fable.
Sonnet and Fable were named
after cartoon characters
not literary forms used by
Shakespeare and Aesop.
I wish my great grandson, Kenyon,
was named after Poet Jane
by my writer granddaughter
because he loves hiking and horses.
But that isn’t the case. She simply
liked the way the name sounded,
she says, which is puzzling why
she calls him Kenny.
When I say my great grandson
Grayson’s name I think of Zane
Grey but that granddaughter
never read Riders of the Purple Sage.
Another grandson was named
Nicholas because his mother
liked how the letters
tumbled over her tongue.
Even though everyone else
calls him Nick, his preferred
name in his teens, his mother
hears music as she calls Nicholas.
Our grandchildren find their baby
names on the internet where we
found ours in books and movies.
We love offspring no matter their name.
Giggle Poem by Jacqueline Jules
He’s just tall enough to reach the knob
and giggly with the power
to close the door in grandma’s face.
“Where’s the baby? Where’s he hiding?”
I ask as if I can’t see his little fingers
pulling the door ajar—checking
with one blue eye if I am still in the hallway,
watching. The game requires an audience.
A grandma willing to sit on the blue carpet,
legs spread in a V, ready to be ambushed
over and over by a laughing whirlwind,
clad in a neon yellow sleeper. The fleece fabric,
soft as his wispy blonde hair, tickles my cheek
as he tumbles into my arms for a quick hug,
before charging back behind the door to play again.
I want a picture. But my phone is downstairs
and I don’t dare break the mood, trying to capture
a moment which will never return, except in this poem,
where his laughter will never stop bubbling from his belly
and his busy legs will never be too big for footed jammies.
Originally published in Up! Magazine.
Catherine by Martha Ellen
“Grammy, let’s fly away.”
We are sitting on the top
step of the second floor
staircase. Down the hall
is her magical kingdom
bedroom. She’s wearing
fairy wings over her street
clothes as usual, a sign of
a theatrical life to bloom
in later years. “I can’t. I
don’t have any wings” I said.
[She doesn’t want to hear it.]
“Hold my hand. We can fly
together.” And I do. We
fly down the hall soaring
into another realm hovering
far above the ordinary, held
aloft by the imagination
of the most innocent.
Her life in theater bloomed.
She flies with some Portland
troupe now. Maybe she’s Puck.
Shape-shifter. Always changing.
Maybe she’s Clarence visiting
George to earn her wings
the Night Before. A bell rings.
She’s not here. That I know.
Into a beautiful, magical world
she flew away as she should,
without me. A woman all her
own. The plan from the beginning.
And yet I keep my good ear
turned to my front gate. I listen.
It may open. She may light
upon my porch one day soon.
Until then, I toss peanuts to
Jack the Crow when he calls
from my garden. I take rest on
my front porch. I delight in the
hummingbirds darting about
the fuchsias gathering nectar
to nurture their young.
Alarie Tennille at two with parents and brother
“Horts, Gramma, Horts!” by Alarie Tennille
I proudly announce as I follow her about
on her morning chores. “Yes, Sweetie,
it’s a very pretty horse,” she says.
At age two, my big brother could read,
memorize all the state capitals, and name
the U.S. Presidents in order of succession.
(He was clearly meant for his prestigious
position at NASA.)
All I could manage was to dig
through my brother’s toy chest
and find a plastic horse. I was thrilled!
I followed Gramma around all morning,
calling, “Horts, Gramma, horts!”
When nap time came, Gramma hid
the horse away. Only at age four
did the family eye doctor break the bad news.
I had incubator blindness – blind in one eye
and nearly blind in the other.
They didn’t tell me at first, but played up
how wonderful it would be to have
glasses just like Gramma. At first, even
corrected, I only had 20-70 vision –
had to sit right in front of the blackboard.
But I belonged to an ardent family of readers,
so I soon jumped ahead of my class
reading level.
After both parents died, my brother told me,
“First they thought you were stubborn.
Then they thought you were stupid. Then
they found out you couldn’t see.”
Third Birthday by Lynn White
Until I was three I had a pet rabbit.
For a long time
I took him everywhere with me.
He was made of felt
and stood upright
tall and thin
holding a bright orange carrot
in front
of his yellow chest.
I held him by his ears
which were dark green like his back.
And then
my mother decreed he had become
too shabby, too dirty
to be my constant companion.
A wash did not improve
his appearance too successfully.
So he became my sleeping partner
and I still loved him as much.
And then
for my third birthday
he was allowed
to come to tea.
I was sick,
too much cake,
my mother said.
Yes
I was sick
all over
my pet rabbit.
And then
he disappeared.
No one knew where.
“He’s gone,”
they said
hippy hop.
I never saw him again.
First published in Blognostics
Gallivanting—Grandma’s Word by Joan Leotta
In a photo of me at age four,
I’m decked out in silk
“Chinese” lounging pjs
Scowling, arms crossed.
Behind me is a partially eaten
ship-shaped cake. My
scowl reveals I’ve just been
told I cannot “go gallivanting”
with grandma on her cruise
“Around the world,”
the Mediterranean to be exact.
She and I often went on jaunts’
jiggling in streetcar seats
to shop or lunch downtown.
We travelled together to
And fro neighborhoods far from mine.
Hadn’t we gone to New York
together with her ladies club
where she bought me the PJs?
I loved to sleep at her house, so
why couldn’t I go with her to
sleep on a ship, see the Pyramids,
toss a coin and dip my toes
in the Trevi fountain?
My staying behind seemed unfair.
Years later, I chose my schools
for programs allowing me on study abroad
scholarships making the most
of my family’s meagre finances.
I shared Africa and Europe
by letter with Grandma
who by then could no longer travel.
Recently, my daughter and I
rode camels at the pyramids
and I joined the picture proof
our ride to the photo of her on
my camel’s elder relative.
“You have the travel bug,”
people often say to me,
but I decline to speak of my love
of travel in terms of insects.
I reply, I enjoy “ gallivanting.”
Why not, it’s in my genes.
Little Ricky by Tina Hacker
It was an August afternoon
and usually the children played outside
filling the sidewalks with hopscotch,
baseballs, jacks and the innocence
of the early offspring of the baby boom.
But this afternoon was different.
It wasn’t the 105 degree heat.
It wasn't the pavement
puffy and blurred under the sun,
or the black oily bubbles blotching cracks in the street.
It was something below awareness
that kept the street empty of children.
"Don't go out. Play inside."
The mothers' warnings echoed
from apartment to apartment
through windows side by side, inches apart.
All listened except one family
who decided to go to the park.
They walked a block, and a little more
when the youngest realized he forgot his tricycle.
It was new and red and he never went anywhere without it
so they went back and started out again.
They walked a block, the five-year-old peddling
when it happened--when the world fell.
A decorative cornice loosened by the heat
plummeted to the sidewalk,
smashing the hopscotch,
smashing the little boy on the red tricycle.
"If only they hadn't gone out,"
the mothers told each other.
"Why did they go out in that heat?"
Baby Jake by Laurie Byro
Being underwater with the roaring furnace, I warm my feet against,
is okay with me. The best place is with mama. I am snuggle safe. I see
In her eyes that she knows I love her, yet I have to swim back. It is tiring
being here and not able to stay with her, so I swim back.
Maybe clutched in my fists is a message, see the lines he writes?
Maybe I am her ancient ones sent by them to tell her this. “Mother,
you are stronger than all of us. You are wiser than you know.”
I hope I get to tell her myself.
