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.
