Anne Whitehouse

Mother and Child
 
A gray mid-March day:
the bare branches lean
across the blank sky.
All colors moved indoors
 
where my daughter and I
play with her toys
laid out on the rug:
rattles, dolls, and trucks,
 
nesting plastic bowls,
a flock of yellow ducks.
Shakily she stands,
her tongue darting like a snake’s
 
between her pink gums,
she smiles, claps her hands,
and bangs the shell table
made by Great-grandpa
 
of rare wormy chestnut.
Its submarine treasures
are sealed under glass.
Her palms leave sticky smears.
 
She reaches for my face,
her hands stroke my ears
and clasp round my neck,
her cheek against my skin.
 
I breathe her mild scent,
I take it all in.
My baby pulls me hard,
she is so insistent.
 
She turns to press
her forehead against mine,
and the world seems to shrink
as if it held just us.
 
Now in my arms she lies,
her mouth at my breast.
She clutches me, and then
relaxes into sleep. The minutes
 
spin away in the dark.
Now I’m forgetting this;
I must have dozed off, too.
She sucks in dreamy bliss,
 
as her sweat gilds my arm:
matted hair, cradled head.
Love flows in me like a
river in a muddy bed
 
that roars around stones
shedding mist and spray,
and swells to meet the sea,
forever carried away.
 
Ephemeral baby
whose growth will replace you,
shadow and memory
till time will erase you,
 
To show you as you were,
my quicksilver daughter,
I fix you on this page:
Claire, eight months of age.
 


Anne Whitehouse’s poetry collections include The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, and Outside from the Inside, the last three from Dos Madres Press. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. She has published essays and lectured on Longfellow and Poe. Her chapbook, Frida, about Frida Kahlo, is forthcoming from Ethel Zine and Micro Press. She is from Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York.