FEEDING BABY POEMS

In the tradition of mother-writers making poems about baby feeding - writers like Eavan Boland and Sylvia Plath - I've written a poem about feeding my new baby. I don't usually put my stuff up here but what the hey, it's small and simple.

Here are extracts from Eavan's 'Night Feed' and Sylvia's 'Morning Song' first - such beautiful poems:

From 'Night Feed':

"I crook the bottle.
How you suckle!
This is the best I can be,
Housewife
To this nursery
Where you hold on,
Dear life.

A silt of milk.
The last suck
And now your eyes are open,
Birth-coloured and offended.
Earth wakes.
You go back to sleep.
The feed is ended."

From 'Morning Song':

"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."

And here's my poem:

Nightfeed

I elbow-cradle her plump
she grunts and guzzles,
unsuckles, then surveys me
with one squint eye.

A pearl of milk slips
from nipple to lips
into the oyster of her ear;
she smiles and re-nuzzles.