Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard: Nameless Pain
I should be happy with my lot:
A wife and mother – is it not
Enough for me to be content?
What other blessing could be sent?
Cynthia Atkins: Hairbrush
He’d fall asleep on my chest, breath light as a falling leaf.
Now, he glides the bristles down my neck— He gently fluffs
the tufts, like airing the pillows.
Bhikshuni Vasetthi: Oh, My Heart
I called out to my grief and drew it toward me.
I held my grief and gently rocked it.
Shh, I said. There, there. There, there.
Barbara Crooker: Star of Wonder, Star of Light
It’s Christmas, the year before the accident, when the earth
still seemed fixed. My husband and children are hanging
lights on the big pine tree
Erma Bombeck: Housework Can Kill You If Done Right
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
Therigatha: Fall on your knees and weep
If you really want to cry for somebody,
why not cry for yourself?
Why not cry for all of us,
who are just passing through?
Bhikshuni Mahaprajapati: What mother doesn’t see a Buddha in her child?
To care for all the children, without exception, as though each will someday be the one to show us all the way home: that is the Path.
Pauletta Hansel: The Stepmother’s Lament
Tell me,
what am I
supposed to do
with all this love?
Video: Spoon
In this visual poem, Markus Kempken explores specific objects — spoons, spatulas, flutes — and the way they trigger memories of his childhood abuse.
Elizabeth Romero: What My Mother Said
think of my love
as a red glass button
hanging on a threadbare dress
Paul Christensen: The Muse of Memory
Nothing stirs but the wind that rattles rain gutters and pulls on the hinges of blistered shutters. A pair of boots has been left out on a patio of gray flagstones, the mud still clinging to their heels like forgotten promises.
Sunnivie Brydum: 11 Better Ideas for a Country in Need of Social Change
Even nations with long histories of inequality and violence carry lessons for how to move toward what might be called a more perfect union.
Video: A Mind Sang
In the last moments before childbirth, a mother sees how similar her life and her child’s life will be.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: The courage that my mother had
The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.
Vox Populi 