Poetry Thursday: Not Exactly an Aubade

My daughter turns seven tomorrow.

I know what you might be thinking: a Sylvia Plath poem for a little girl’s birthday, hmmm.

But it’s the right poem for my Mona, and for me, and for the mornings we had. I knew I would miss them--that is how I got through them, by repeating and repeating to myself how I would miss them.

Morning Song
Sylvia Plath

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.




From Ariel, Harper & Row, 1966. Copyright © 1966 by Ted Hughes. Republished for educational purposes only.

[via Academy of American Poets, natch. Image via Dave Neary]