Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

Morning Song

 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

Took its place among the elements. 

 

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls. 

 

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind’s hand. 

 

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear. 

 

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.  The window square 

 

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.