A Bit Of Poetry

Written after a visit to the Natural History Museum :

Stegosaurus

140 million years too late,
Standing before a silenced Stegosaurus whose eyeless sockets peer out at
Kids drooling ice cream and old ladies in `I Love NY` t-shirts, which are too tight.



We move on quickly to the interactive stuff which the kids prefer:
Foam rubber skin and spines that light up at the press of a button
Get the punters in the door, not a pile of old dinosaur bones.


And this one.. well, wow. I forgot how bamboozled I was by first time parenthood.
I was filled with a mixture of ecstasy and horror when Charlotte was born. It instigated a gargantuan seismic shift in my life, the likes of which I've never experienced before or since ! I remember speaking to friends who were having fertility treatment and feeling so ashamed of myself for finding it tough.
Found this lovely cheery verse in my documents folder which I'd forgotten about :

Mother Bliss

I questioned why no one had told me this
That I could pace for hours in airless gloom
The strained smile varnished tightly on my lips
as I sway her back and forth across the room.

And how we yearned for this. Hoped for years
Took no advice, no pills, no IVF
Nothing is ever quite as it appears.
You start a life and then you mourn the death

of solitude and all that came before.
Get up at noon, read books and stay up late.
Now it’s ‘how’s the baby?’ it’s a bore,
And other questions I have learned to hate.




A veritable ray of sunshine I am !!
let me report that my daughters bring so much joy and love and happiness into my life and they make me so proud and I adore them more than it's possible to adore anyone (but those early weeks are a fuggy blur of nightfeeds and hormones-gone-awry)