Another three poems

For all the ways my heart breaks and is made whole again by the day-in-day-out of motherhood

This is my second poetry post (you can read the first one here). I’m not sure I consider myself a poet, but I do consider myself someone who finds both solace and catharsis in poetry — Mostly in reading proper poets who actually know what they’re doing, but occasionally in writing my own (or at least trying to).

The last couple of weeks have been especially poetry-heavy for me. I took a ‘poetry in parenthood’ workshop, saw the launch of Maria Ferguson’s collection Swell, and then stumbled across a copy of Jessica Urlichs’ collection Beautiful Chaos in a new bookshop that just opened by my husband’s work. Both books have brought me to tears already.

Just a moment of mothering joy

These poems started life either on the pages of my journal or in the notes app on my phone, jotting down all the ways my heart breaks and is made whole again by the day-in-day-out of motherhood. Some grew spontaneously from a fleeting thought or conversation and others evolved from prompts, either found online or given in writing workshops.

In my paid membership mothership I share prompts for writing through motherhood (not specifically poetry prompts, though sometimes they do create the start of poems), you can join for £4/mo if that sounds like something you’d enjoy.

Postnatal class

You don’t have to soak in every moment.
If you are saturated and can barely stay afloat. 
You can survive the hard bits 
   (there are some really fucking hard bits). 
This will get easier 
   and it will get harder 
      and it will get easier again. 
Take the advice that resonates. 
Fuck the advice that doesn’t. 
Different babies are different. 
Different mothers are different. 
This baby needs this mother. 
Try to find the good bits 
   (there are some really fucking good bits). 
Write them down, 
   or photograph them, 
      or memorise them like your times tables. 
One day soon you’ll see dry land.

— Postnatal class [See on Instagram]

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How I measure time

In onesie sizes.
In nursery rhymes, 
In the temperature of my coffee.
In the length of tiny fingernails, 
In the row of empty milk bottles, 
In the back and forth of playground swings.
In the distance between roundabouts on the road I drive trying to get my daughter to sleep.
In storybooks, 
In the gaps between teeth, 
In the silence between her bedtime and mine.

— How I measure time [See an earlier version on Instagram]

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Splintering

You have play-doh stuck to the soles of your pumps and
nursery clothes, paint-stained and faded and
your name on your lunchbox and
an extra pair of wellies, spare coat and
a gate with a code and
“Goodness, isn’t she small?” and
“She’s a baby,” I think and
you wave goodbye with one hand and
reach for the door with the other and
maybe the crackle of autumn isn’t just bonfires and
falling leaves and
really its all the mothers’ hearts splintering and
staying there on the schoolyard.

— Splintering [First shared on Instagram]

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