CRESTING THE FIRST HILL


The rollercoaster     picks up speed
you assume boat pose     straining to sit

you discover     new vowels, try
the kick and roll     open your mouth wide

Half a year ago     you emerged slick
one skinny fist    clenched and bluish

now when I bend     to kiss your belly
your eyes crinkle     and you grab my hair

my glasses, whatever's     within reach
we zoom downhill     toward who you'll become

---

Drew turns six months old today. That simple factual statement blows my mind: how can it have been half a year since he was born?

This week's mother poem arises out of my sense that as he continues to change and grow, we're moving faster and faster into his life. The first few months seem, in retrospect, like the slow clicking of the rollercoaster cars climbing bit by bit up the first long hill -- and now we're about to go flying down into the unknown.

I reread my collected mother poems a few days ago. (In addition to posting them here, I've been adding them one by one to a Word file which, it seems clear, is going to be my next manuscript.) I'm humbled to remember what a wild journey it's already been so far. The early weeks feel like a dream to me now.

I didn't write to the prompt at Big Tent Poetry this week, but here's a link to this week's come one, come all post so you can check out all of the new poems which entered the world -- both those written in response to the prompt, and those (like this one) written out of other sources of inspiration.

[rollercoaster.mp3]