And I want to read one for her that I wrote.
I wrote about a poem a month, her whole life.
And this is the eighth month, when she's eight months old.
"Eighth Month Couplets: Another Letter
from the Wondrous Field."
"So that you may remember pre-language events
and not bump your head as you crawl across the alphabet,
you've had plenty of adventures already, to be sure.
All of culture lies before you to be unglued.
You can dance in a roundel in your romantic phase
amongst hostas and hearty begonias bedecked
without irony, and then throw it all over for Apollo.
Then again, subvert the third term
beneath the Dionysian tread of trees.
When I was pregnant, I had a vision of lying back
into the lap of the Earth supporting me from below as I
was holding you on a conch couch at my sweet shrink's.
The other day, I envisioned a huge breast
I suck on from above.
As you did just a moment ago.
I let you down on the floor so's I can write
this line on the ThinkPad.
You are reaching up to touch the table matrix.
You have never tasted African slush punch from Vicksburg
or seen a folk art cat bird feeder inscribed with free bird
seed.
I write today from the Springs Amagansett
where we swam in an L-shaped pool at Carol's place
and ate striped bass fish tacos.
But you ate strained green beans and bananas,
and are playing with Laura and shells on the white carpet.
You are dressed all in white, as I am.
'It's going to be hot today,' she says.
You are a superstar because you're crawling now
with two hands planted before you
and pull your body forward, undulating like a worm.
Make your backbone shake.
You are a Brown Torn girl in the ring, tra-la-la-la-la,
and you look like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum.
A red and green hose like a snake spiraling in the sun.
A globe sun, black, spins, as he lied and upped the date
of his death, Jackson Pollock.
I am a permeable membrane.
I think more or mortality and immortality,
as when in labor on December 7th,
and it was surely to be your birthday on the 8th.
It was determined.
So I said, 'The eighth.
That means infinity.'
My mother was impressed with my articulation
and that I could speak at all, much less
make poetic conceptualizations about your birthday.
In fact, I was obsessing on what it would be in the big birthday
book.
You almost made the day of eccentricity
along with Emily D., but you passed that over
for the day of abandon, total freedom.
Same birthday as Sinead O'Connor; Mary, Queen of Scots;
Jim Morrison; Flip Wilson; alter-ego Geraldine,
whom your grandmother of the same name
was purported to have loved; and others of wild nature,
unable to be contained.
You were also born in the year of the horse.
And as a Sagittarius, you are a double horsey, ready to run
and travel free.
But I hope you'll stick close by me
for quite a while, because I love it.
And even though last month you supposedly finally figured out
we have separate bodies and identities,
you were your own self from the beginning,
a focused, discerning light, so calm for a baby.
You did cry, though not as much as we hear.
And you did not have any choler or colic,
but are of an undeniably sweet disposition.
Anyway, as I was saying, I love you close by me.
And we were together in bed, you nursing in the crook of my arm.
I can imagine you are still attached to me,
as you were in the inside.
And your fine, smooth body exceptionally fat, fair,
and pure, is covered with a fine patina of sweat.
It is like you're still swimming in me.
One time when you were kicking up a storm so strong
in Vienna, when I was walking one night
to catch the tram to meet your father,
you kicked such a complex rhythm that I
had to stop walking in order to process the polyphony.
I notice these couplet lines are growing longer and longer.
It's because I have so much to say to you,
and the headlong rush seems the way
to go if I am to attempt to catch up
on all the varied strands of thought and experience
that have transpired since your birth,
making everything richer and more layered.
I even had the feeling yesterday that you'd always been here,
even though you've only been outside a little
over half a year.
Maybe you're always there in eternity or infinity.
You met Destiny on the street the other day.
And I said, Destiny, meet Reality,
and Reality, meet Destiny.
And Destiny's mother laughed and told her friend
how I looked around as she was calling out
down 8th Avenue, 'Destiny.
Destiny.' So many little happenings since you were born.
And now that art and life even seem more enmeshed,
I think I'll go take a swim with you in that L-shaped pool,
with you and your bright pink swim diapers
given to us, unused, by Stella.
So many lovely hand-me-downs, and new things, too."
So that's one of many of the baby poems.