Morning Song

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.


(1961)

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