Mother Poems | Poemist

Popular Mother Poems

The Complaint Of Ceres

by Friedrich Schiller

Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore

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The Stone

by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.

Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead--
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired--

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When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'D

by Walt Whitman

from Memories of President Lincoln

1

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

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Poem

by Elizabeth Bishop

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there

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Leaves Of Grass. A Carol Of Harvest For 1867

by Walt Whitman

A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,

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Recent Mother Poems

The Best Beauty

by Somali Mukherjee

You never grow old;
Mom, your beauty surpasses
Everything on earth.

Mama and Mom

by Kara Prince

On good days, we used to sing the “Mama Day” song. Mama would dance in her pink terrycloth robe, smile wide, and open her arms to us. She would turn on all the lights in the house, tell stories about when she was a girl, and once did a cartwheel. Back then, I didn’t know how to tell if it would be a Mama day or a Mom day. Mom days were longer; she was quiet in the mornings, and after work, she would pick fights. Some Mom days were spent entirely on the couch, but she could never tell you what was on. Laughter and manic sobs sound remarkably similar through the cracks under your door.
Mama never acknowledged Mom, nor did anyone else, for that matter. As the years went by, Mom stuck around. She shattered the TV remote and called me a whore for the first time in my life; it is still banded together, the remote and my sense of self-worth. She pushed my brother against the wall and took the keys for more than a few nights, that's about when he started disappearing too.
Mama still came around every so often, but couldn’t understand why her babies wouldn’t dance with her anymore. Mama taught me to cook, garden, to always send birthday cards and thank you notes, and all about the magic of the radio. Mom taught me to be independent from the world, to never have needs, that guilt and volume get you further than reason.
For years, I tried to reconcile how I could love and be loved by both Jekyll and Hyde, but now I just hug her, expecting barbs.
I am not as mad as I used to be, now that I hold babies and wish that it could be my fate one day, but how can I create the greatest love of my life with this sword hanging over my head?
My friends joke about the biological clock ticking away, but freezing my eggs won’t deactivate this bomb. I understand why she chose to bring me into this world; she wanted to experience that great love that only a mother knows. But I know that love too, I feel it so strongly that I have saved the child that never was from ever losing that love.

Trinkets

by Anna Wakefield

“Okay so you see?
You-you see this on the left,
This pocket watch,
The face, it tells more-.

Eh? No, no. Fine, I guess.
Or what about this plate?
Hand painted chi-
… No, just one, not four.

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Mother Call me Ayatullah Nurjati (After Learning the Legacy of the Saint)

by Ayatullah Nurjati

Mother called me Ayatullah Nurjati—two words I made into a blind map for this ever-heavier life.
Back then, I thought only she strung them together.

“Ayatullah,” she said, “Sign of Allah.”
I learned to read it in the wrinkles of my father’s brow,
in prayers stumbling from our mouths too busy complaining.

“Nurjati,” she whispered, “Light of the Teak.”
I thought it an old metaphor,
until I realized: teak isn’t valued in its youth.

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Madre Deud

by Aldo Kraas

Madre Deus
And her people
Are throwing
The the dead people's
Ashes in the Sea
During the night
Also they throw
Flowers in the Sea
For the dead people
Who died

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