Mother Poems

Popular Mother Poems

Poem

by Elizabeth Bishop

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there

......

My Father Is A Retired Magician

by Ntozake Shange

(for ifa, p.t., & bisa)

my father is a retired magician
which accounts for my irregular behavior
everythin comes outta magic hats
or bottles wit no bottoms & parakeets
are as easy to get as a couple a rabbits
or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958

my daddy retired from magic & took

......

Alexander's Feast; Or, The Power Of Music

by John Dryden

'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son—
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais by his side
Sate like a blooming eastern bride

......

Arithmetic

by Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
    head.
Arithmet ic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how
    many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five
    six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
    to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
    you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the

......

The Queen's Rival

by Sarojini Naidu

QUEEN GULNAAR sat on her ivory bed,
Around her countless treasures were spread;

Her chamber walls were richly inlaid
With agate, porphory, onyx and jade;

The tissues that veiled her delicate breast,
Glowed with the hues of a lapwing's crest;

But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed

......

Recent Mother Poems

My Mother’s Tomb

by Jeffrey Pipes Guice

Here I sit
On my mother’s tomb
It was only yesterday
I was in her womb

She was here
One minute
And then
She was gone
It is here

......

The idle child

by Sanjana N J

Gratitude knots in my throat.
I am surrounded by the bounty of her sacrifices, yet I let it slip through my fingers.
My heart aches with the weight of her expectations, each one a burden I fail to shoulder.

I am the idle child in the garden of plenty, the squanderer of every gift bestowed upon me.