In our corner of the world, spring has come! Melting snow, rising sap, new green shoots, budding trees. “Spring is the earth’s birthday,” as Alice and Martin Provensen have it in their classic children’s book A Book of Seasons.
And what of your own birth? Are there family stories about the day of your arrival, a received mythology that shapes you?
What about the weather? Were you born during the biggest snow storm of the decade or just after the drought had finally broken? Has the natural world mirrored or reflected your inner world?
What was going to change with your birth? The beloved house that would soon be outgrown, the jealous cat who would start spending more time outside, a set of bunk beds purchased to make room for the new baby. What old patterns gave way once you came?
Try It: Birth Day Poetry
Consider the questions above, and shape your stories into a poem. Let the natural details root your poem in the physical world. Then look for a surprising turn–the unopened gift of your birth.
Photo by Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Kortney Garrison.
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Ann Kroeker says
Kortney, it’s great to see you here—and what a lovely prompt. In my Facebook feed, a friend who raises goats announced that they have a baby boy kid as of yesterday, Easter. She’s asking for J names. 🙂
Thanks for this creative boost.
L.L. Barkat says
Naming the Kid
After Reading Megan Willome
J, the upside down
shepherd’s
cane, that brings
Joy into the world
as much as
it corrals
our sorrows
into softness
like a new babe’s
skin. We’ll name
him with a J,
to shape our mouths
into the future—
joy and sorrow
both.
But today
we simply hold him
in that limbo
sweet, the time
before the
naming.
Kortney Garrison says
Love that upside down shepherd’s crook and the corral for sorrow. But oh! The time before the naming! Each of my children went for a few days without names. I had never considered those times as anything other than prelude. Your limbo sweet has got me thinking!
Kortney Garrison says
Thanks, Ann! I’m here providing this week’s prompt as part of my Homeschool MFA! Loved seeing your micro coaching in IG Stories!
A new baby goat on Easter–what wonder! Puts me in mind of the Wendell Berry poem, “Her First Calf.” “After the months/of his pursuit of her now/ they meet face to face.”
Rick Maxson says
“We’ll name
him with a J,
to shape our mouths
into the future—”
What a lovely thought.
Rick Maxson says
Kortney, I second Ann’s comment, great post.
Kortney Garrison says
Thanks so much for reading along and adding your voice, Rick!
Sandra Heska King says
Third.
Katie says
We really love the Provensen’s books and enjoyed reading Book of Seasons countless times – now my eldest reads it to our grands:)
Kortney Garrison says
I first found this treasure in a charity shop for a dime 10 years ago when my oldest was a baby. We have loved and read that book to tatters! Love that the reading is continuing with the grands, Katie!
Katie says
So do I Kortney:)
Think I bought it new originally, but it is quite worn with use!
Here is a birthday haiku I came up with today:
baby sister came
brought joy to our home again
we were tickled pink:)
Kortney Garrison says
Thank you for sharing your poem, Katie! Your joy is palpable!
Here’s mine…also for the recent birth of a new girl cousin:
For Hannah Felicity Born March 19, 2018
Lunch, then window shopping at the white
stucco tourist shops. We waited for your birth
and watched the woman cool walnut fudge,
pushing it just to the edge
of the marble table. All we had
to coax you into our arms
was the briny smell of the bay, damp
sunshine, and the memory of sweetness.
L.L. Barkat says
I really like how this section below mirrors the birth process. My favorite way that poems can be powerful!
“and watched the woman cool walnut fudge,
pushing it just to the edge”
Katie says
Thank you , Kortney:)
And your last verse makes my arms itch to hold a newborn again! Especially: “the memory of sweetness.”
I love the name Felicity (name of our one granddaughter – out of six grandsons!) While I wrote the haiku about my daughter coming after two boys it could just as easily be said of the happiness we felt at being able to buy bows and frills again after the first 3 grands were boys:)
Thank you for sharing your poem as well – pretty sweet;)
Gratefully,
Katie
Sandra Heska King says
“pushing it just to the edge of the marble table”
nana says
loved your poem–passing on the familial love of chocolate Hannah is a treasure filled truffle.
Kortney Garrison says
Thanks, Mama! Can’t wait to meet her in June!
Sandra Heska King says
Delivering Daddy
A passion for balsa and glue
birthed him a place as a CAP cadet
who taught airplane spotting and Morse code
during World War II.
He moved through the various stages
until he reached sergeant rank
and was pushed to senior placing.
But he cut the cord because of a home delivery,
trading balsam for bottles
and deciphering the code of cries,
commissioned as a new daddy.
He didn’t know that two weeks later
he’d have been promoted to lieutenant colonel.
I heard this story first just last week. I knew Dad was in the Civil Air Patrol–the closest he’d ever come to enlisting. He tried every branch and wanted to fly, but his nystagmus was his roadblock. But I never knew the rest of the story–that then there was me.
Kortney Garrison says
Love hearing this Birth of a Daddy story, Sandra! Especially these two strong lines: “deciphering the code of cries / commissioned as a new daddy.”
lynn says
Love this story, Sandra! What a brave commissioning 🙂
RIck Maxson says
Interlude
In time, he returned to constellations
that defined him,
and once again he was named.
What we perceive as the infinite,
he knew as interlude.
It passed through him as a brightness,
to a form unknown.
Then sound began,
as if it carried him in its oscillations—
what we call waves he learned and endured.
There was a movement that was not him,
and a moment, when the ear was ready—
the sound of rivers awakened him.
Before thought, there was urgency
beyond memory—in the rivers a sameness—
fading in the circuitry of touch,
another in the darkness that was not him,
at the terminus of reach, where time began
with the finite spaces of the world.
The world entered him as symphony and cacophony,
a blindness waiting heedlessly for music.
Once, and suddenly, touch and touched,
the eternal forgotten, the mirror of identity
began the searching in him
for that which he will never find, a rapacious longing in him,
the original sorrow, we have called sin.
Light—unremembered and disguised—
sound like nothing before, the weight of being.
Symphonies are searches for the music of two hearts,
the echoing of an echo.
He followed home the crumbs of a language
that appeared, slowly within the spaces of breathing.
With these, he makes pictures
of a half remembered darkness and light—colors,
parsed and bent toward the earth.
Kortney Garrison says
Love this title, Rick. The shifts from near to far, the immensity, and all of the music in these lines.
lynn says
Did they name the baby goat? Jacoby seems a good, biblical name that begins with a J…was he spotted? We are calving now on our farm…snow flies every other day but the calves keep springing! I was born as a gift on my mother’s sweet birthday…which was Valentine’s Day (no, my face is not heart-shaped and I haven’t written a poem about it…yet).
dan julian says
“broken birthday mother math”
i was born on my mother’s birthday
when she was 25
and the math is broken! because
every year until i was 25, if you doubled my age, it was less than her age
like when i was 24, which doubles to 48, she was 49
but then when i turned 26, she was 51, and if you doubled my age, it was more than her age
i am the best birthday present she ever had, so she says…
when i was in college, i grew my hair to my shoulders
fine, blonde… my mother’s hair
then one year i had most of it chopped off
i gave my hair to an artist and commissioned her to make a necklace for my mother for our birthday
she made a fine long tight braid of it with a nice clasp and a pendant
the pendant was our birth stone, garnet
not something one wears out to dinner, but i’m sure she still has it
come this July, if you double my age it will be 90
and she will be 70
i’m gaining on her
lynn says
Love your birthday math and how you’re “gaining on her”! I too was born on my mother’s birthday (she died at age 25 when I was 16 months old).
Dan Julian says
small world. and sometimes… cruel?
lynn says
…I was blessed with another mother, who also loved me.
Dan Julian says
right on. love is a blessing indeed.
Kortney Garrison says
So much power in all of the words of your title:
Broken. Birthday. Mother. Math.
Thanks for sharing your poem with us, Dan!
Dan Julian says
pleasure mine, to be sure. great prompt!