Family poems, at times, may give us a glimpse of insight into the institution called family. Whatever, they are always good to read at least once!
Family poems by author-names starting with A
Andrea Potos:
Family (mother) poem titled First Knowing:
That second day of kindergarten, I ditched while Miss Clemens bent at the sink, helping Peter Farley wash the paint off his hands. I scurried across the wide green fields that led. to the road where our row of white townhouses awaited me.
I wanted no more days without my mother placed in the center of every hour. I wanted her voice, the scent of the perfume she dabbed on her writst each morning before we watched my father walk away. We stood at her dresser while she released the stopper from a crystal bottle so blue it rivalled sunlight staining the ocean surface.
I wanted to travel with her from supermarked to bank, dry cleaners to drugstore, wherever the days life took her. As if sensing some hunger to come, I craved her with a fierceness that made me run, as if knowing I would soon lose her to a sadness vaster than any of these fields I could cover with the pace of my own feet.
Family poems by author-names starting with B
Bill Mohr:
Family poem (father) titled Big Band, Slow Dance:
Were you close? Im asked, as if grief Would sting less deeply were we friends As well as son and father. Further apart Two men could never meet, though blood bends
Through arteries, veins and capillaries Summoned into Presence by his pleasure. On that I could have grown more slowly - Remember being held, and cradled like treasure.
Family poems by author-names starting with C
Christine McAuliffe:
Family poem (father) titled Jubilant Father:
His face is like a sun, warms the moon beside him. She´s grown full; tonight begins the waning. The tide pulls through her very bones, her form aches as each wave crests.
The earth pulse, heavy, blood warm within her Beats new chords, old sun god chants. "You are the first mother and the last, all spring flesh has traveled through you."
Aztec plumed and gold beaded, your priest kneels at the holy alter, gathers each salt pearl shed, nectar for his sacrament.
You are the temple, we pilgrims swept through the gates, bent figures know the scent and petals of your presence, spread our arms to harvest blossoms, and your priest, sun struck, kneels beside you.
Christine McAuliffe:
Family poem (parents) titled Hymn to Albaro:
The verdant country side rambles up the mountain pedestal. I feel the tingle of skin in light wind whispers, hear each instrument in the symphony of birds gathered together.
In this stillness A shovel breaks earth. I hear the crunch And scrape of rocks.
The rain comes, Tropical hills and mountains green. It is a good season for planting mango, limon, and coconut. He will be using a cane When the palm has grown tall And his childrens children sing in the tamed garden we only imagine, wrapped around the walls that will grow out of the ditches the amigos dig together today.
In this place things are as they seem, the future is certain, the air clear, and we have time to wait playing dominoes while the coals meander their way to a fire.
Butterflies kiss the grass. These children do as their parents did, certain of their place. One digs, one pours water over the fire. In this place there is time for the earth, for each other, the past and future.
The promise they have is three fence posts wide and five deep. it is freedom, wealth, security.
Together we breathe a foundation for the infant waiting in Lupitas belly.
One uses a pick, the other a shovel, the cricket whirs in the grass. Digging is hard work In the insistent sun.
Family poems by author-names starting with D
D.H. Lawrence:
Family poem (tribute) titled Piano:
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor With the great black piano appassionato. The glamor Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
Family poems by author-names starting with J
Judith Pordon:
Family poem (grand parents) titled Vicki:
She covers more territory in one day of window shopping than all her grandchildren running after her, too tired for another store.
In the dark after everyone else sleeps, we laugh together about how someone looked so ridiculous in bright yellow and fuscia.
I feel her smile linger in the room like the smell of coffee or the broiled liver she craves.
I reach to poke her gurgling snores but want to hug her, tell her she is my favorite and I am glad I came out of her, secondhand.
Two generations is not enough to separate us. And now, neither is her death.
Family poems by author-names starting with L
Langston Hughes:
Family poem (mother) titled Mother to Son:
Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Li-Young Lee:
Family poem (father) titled The Gift:
To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.
I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head.
Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy's palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife's right hand.
Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he's given something to keep. I kissed my father.
Family poems by author-names starting with N
Nguyen Quang Thieu Ha Noi, Viet Nam :
Family poem (mother) titled My Mothers Hair:
One of your hairs fell out last night: A piece of your life was gone without a sound. I know a difficult day is coming, My heart, pierced, utters a quiet cry.
Let my childhood smile again in the sun And turn me into an innocent little headlouse So I can crawl through the jungle of your hair And sing a song of darkness in its fragrance.
Under your fingernail-roof I'll sleep in my house; In my black dream I'll water your black trees. I'll pick black fruits, and hair-jungle bees Will bring me black poems to be opened.
How will I live, without your hair? How will I breathe, without its fragrance? How will I survive, when I am discovered By ghosts of wooden combs combing your hair?
Let me wear shows made of dawn-flowers And crawl without a sound into your sleep. Ill take the place of the hair thats gone And sing of hair-clouds flying from night to day.
Family poems by author-names starting with S
Scott Wiggerman:
Family poem (mother) titled Photograph:
This is the way you wanted to be remembered.
Elegant black dress, sophisticated white pearls, a radiant halo of hair, blond as Marilyn Monroe's. Contacts, green as hundred dollar bills, that draw men to your eyes. Perpetually tanned, too, like a Fifties' movie star. This photograph is more head shot for Hollywood than portrait for an obituary.
Sometimes we get the chance to realize our dreams before we lose touch with life. We journey to Borneo, purchase a Porsche, or hang-glide off a cliff. You prepared for death by perfecting your image, becoming your own press agent. What were we to think, when you handed us the 8 x 10 color glossies? All they were missing was an autograph-- and any hint of cancer.
Despite your best orchestrations, I will remember you the way I have known you-- more Norma Jean than icon, less distant, more mother.
Susan Berlin:
Family poem (father) titled Request Denied:
At the end, no one showed but us:
distant daughter, twice-disowned son and Wife #6, cracking gum, practicing your signature on the back of your withdrawal slip. Who else did you think would come? From what source a guest list drawn, a crowd to rally
as you sank, yacht-sails dragged through water you fouled? Perhaps a priest to anoint you, atheist, on your way down? Perhaps Wife #4, bearing a basket of fruit and the knife she tried to stab you with? Or would you prefer to take int 5th?
Which of your siblings, long deleted from your mailing list, did you expect to make the trip, cough up six bucks for gas, plus tolls. And which of us (your two children, known) owned you so much as an hour of our grown-up time, you who never held a hand or gave a dime?
Hard to admit; country-club Communist short-tipping your caddy, sweet-timing saccharine sugar daddy, buttering your way in and out of wedding rings (more than enough for one entire hand). In the end, even you wanted tears and a 6-piece band.
How poorly you planned.
Susan Dane:
Family poem (mother) titled Labor Night:
Her world is upside down, waiting for the baby. She paces in the night and sleeps the day. She has cleaned every corner of the house, rearranged things twice, then started on the garage. Her belly so round, so full of grace, she cannot feel her legs or in between them. All this will have to wait.
For him there is nothing romantic in the coming. When there's not one more inch to spare, one more ounce of air, he'll push his way into the new world.
For now, there is still time between the violent seconds. She rises in the night, to cook the peppers, pops the stems and scatters seeds, and marvels at their colors-- yellow, orange, red and green. Christmas in the air!
But life starts with a fight, a gritting of his will and single-mindedness. Necessity, the mother of invention. For his first breath, he parts her bone, slow and hard like the resurrection, and moving of the stone.
Family poems by author-names starting with T
Thanh Nguyen:
Family poem (mother) titled My Stepmother:
When my stepmother first came, her eyes were sharp and bright as little knives. Her youth and my childhood ran into each other - she was the victor. Althought my father was still alive, I felt orphaned, depressed and alone, crying by myself, grew up alone. In the first year of peace, everyoe drifted. My father went out - returned with gray hair. I have my father to compensate me for the loss of my childhood. Sometimes vague envy found father stitting in silent expectation...
A decade goes by. My stepmother is still as beautiful as at first, though older. She returns to ask my father to forgive her mistake: My half sister has another half sister. My heart was no longer jealous - I ony felt sorry for my half sister, who was really too young... I hoped she would not find herself once more on a tipping wagon. My father died, rain poured down in the courtyard. My tears gleaned some contentment: Mother anf father together now, forever.
After that she aged quickly, solitary, silent as a shadow, her eyes no longer sharp as knives. When my son entered the world, she was the first to carry him, she who changed him the first time, placed him in the gently rocking hammock. My half-sister asked her mother, only helf-joking, Will you favor my first child this way? Lullabies contain no riddles and tears run down forever. My stepmothers silent eyes smiled brightly when my son threw himself into her arms: "Grandma!"
Thomas Hardy:
Family poem (tribute) titled Heredity:
I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion.
The years-heired feature that can In curve and voice and eye Despise the human span Of durance -- that is I; The eternal thing in man, That heeds no call to die
Family poems by author-names starting with V
Virgil Suarez:
Family poem (mother) titled Hail Storm:
The last time my mother visited Cuba she found a car and driver to take her to the province of Las Villas, seven hours from Havana, and on the way it started to rain, and the driver, a young man kept telling her to relax, that this was the way it always rained in Cuba this time of year, and she kept telling him she wasnt a tourist, that shed been born here, and the driver drove on in the wolf-mouth-dark of the road, insects and sleet rain crossing the head lights, and my mother couldnt relax, and when it started to hail, fists pounding on the hood of the automobile, she panicked, prayed to the point she spooked the young driver into stopping by the side of the road, if only until the hail storm stopped, of only until her heart settled and she began to recognize that what was pounding the car wasnt ice balls, but her memories falling back, her life welcoming her where she belongs.
These are the family poems that appealed me quite a bit - in a way; they are my personal choice from amongst a host of them.
I'll keep adding more to them as and when I come across the ones that touch me deep.
Keep checking, if you please!
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