Today I turn 28. I feel pretty good about it. I don’t really set goals in my head that are determined by age, but I think to have my Masters and Master in Fine Arts and a stable full time teaching position at this age is a good place to be. I also have a lot of great people in my life right now, so it feels good to be 28.
I took a quiz on Facebook to determine “which poet I am.” Yes, I know but these are the things one does when they don’t want to grade papers. Anyway. Turns out that I am channeling Sylvia Plath, so in honor of that and in honor of birthdays, here is your poem for this week:
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.
Sylvia Plath
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Brianna Pike 