Explore Poems: Birth

Showing 1-20 of 20 poems

Filter Results

Saturday’s Child
By Countee Cullen
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
   With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black raccoon—
   For implements of battle.

Some are swaddled in silk and down,
   And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
   On...
Quiescence
By Alyse Knorr
Between us bobs the baby, solemn in her infant wet suit.
The pool is the only place where
screaming does not indicate terror.

The neighbor’s pansy beds—O to lie down in those beds
and doze. Greener than grass, says Sappho,
originator of envy.

My...
The Stork
By Hannah Lowe
The stork arrived alone one day,
beak sharpened like a bayonet.
All the love you’ve had turned bad! he sang,
eyes boring through the dingy nets.
He hopped onto the patio.
Good lord! Is this a rented flat?

Behind the...
Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be
By Ross Gay
The way the universe sat waiting to become,
quietly, in the nether of space and time,

you too remain some cellular snuggle
dangling between my legs, curled in the warm

swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be—
And who knows?—I wonder,...
The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee
By N. Scott Momaday
I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of...
- Living
- Birth
- Get Well & Recovery
- Meters
- Free Verse
- Techniques
- Anaphora
- Gratitude
- Joy & Contentment
- + 2 more
Heart’s Needle
By W. D. Snodgrass
1
Child of my winter, born
When the new fallen soldiers froze
In Asia’s steep ravines and fouled the snows,
When I was torn

By love I could not still,
By fear that silenced my cramped mind
To that cold war where, lost, I could not find
My...
You’re
By Sylvia Plath
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools’...
Infant Sorrow
By William Blake
My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swaddling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon...
- Living
- Infancy
- Relationships
- Family & Ancestors
- Birth
- Birthdays
- Stanza Forms
- Couplet
- Rhymed Stanza
- Techniques
- Simile
- + 4 more
Infant Joy
By William Blake
I have no name
I am but two days old.—
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,—
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee;
Thou dost smile.
I sing the...
- Living
- Infancy
- Birth
- Birthdays
- Techniques
- Refrain
- Types/Modes
- Dramatic Monologue
- Classics
- Timeless Treasures
- + 3 more
Anna Maria Is Coming, or Maybe Thomas Barton, or Max!
By Hilda Raz
New life! Will he toe out like Dolly, like John? Will her eyes be fires?
Blue and green, like Papa's, the ocean at the shore?
Will she sing in the bath? Play piano in her diapers?
Will her heart leap at large machinery?...
A Prayer for My Daughter
By William Butler Yeats
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour...
To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible
By Anna Lætitia Barbauld
Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow
For many a moon their full perfection wait,—
Haste, precious pledge of happy love, to go
Auspicious borne through life's mysterious gate.

What powers lie folded in thy curious frame,—
Senses...
Étude Réaliste
By Algernon Charles Swinburne
I
A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
      Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
      A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
      They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds...
Only Child
By D. Nurkse
1

I cradled my newborn daughter
and felt the heartbeat
pull me out of shock.
She didn’t know
what her hands were:
she folded them. I asked her
was there a place
where there was no world.
She didn’t know
what a voice was: her lips
were the shape of a...
Scallop Song
By Anne Waldman
I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe

I wore a garland of the brain that was whole

It commanded me, done babbling

And I no more blabbed, spare no lie

Tell womanhood she shake off pity

Tell the man...
Listening
By David Ignatow
You wept in your mother's arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.

Listening to your sobs,
I was resolved against my will
to do well by us
and so I said, without thinking,
in great panic, To do wrong
in one's own...
To a Child
By Sophie Jewett
The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
   Hearken the tale they told:
How in some far-off place and year,
   Before the world grew old,

I was a dreaming forest tree,
   You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
   Because the north wind...
Lullaby
By John Fuller
Sleep little baby, clean as a nut,
Your fingers uncurl and your eyes are shut.
Your life was ours, which is with you.
Go on your journey. We go too.

The bat is flying round the house
Like an umbrella turned into a mouse.
The moon...
Sonnet: On Receiving a Letter Informing Me of the Birth of a Son
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When they did greet me Father, sudden Awe
Weigh'd down my spirit! I retired and knelt
Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt
No heavenly visitation upwards draw
My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart.
Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought
The unquiet...
Mrs. Adam
By Kathleen Norris
Wake up,
you’ll need your wits about you.
This is not a dream,
but a woman who loves you, speaking.

She was there
when you cried out;
she brushed the terror away.
She knew
when it was time to sin.
You were wise
to let her handle it,
and leave that...
- Living
- Birth

p1The Stork

p1A Prayer for My Daughter

p1Only Child

p1Listening

p1Mrs. Adam

The Stork

A Prayer for My Daughter

Only Child

Listening

Mrs. Adam