Happy Birthday, Ma! :)

Five poems on a mother’s love + one that I wrote ❤️

Jan 19, 2022

This special newsletter is dedicated to my mother, whose birthday it is today.

1. A Thank You Note by Lang Leav

You have told me
All the things
I need to hear
Before I knewI needed to hear them
To be unafraid
Of all the things
I used to fear,
Before I knew
I shouldn’t fear them.

2. Forms of Love by Daniel Baylis

Sometimes I wonder,
what’s the point?
Why be good? Why care? Why try to change things?
Why—when we continue to wreck each other?

Yet I keep moving forward.

Not because I am confident of any outcomes,
But because I am still susceptible to sweet things:
a sunset,
a cup of coffee,
a warm blanket,
the smell of lilacs,
the sound of my mother’s laughter,
and all the other common forms of love.

Sometimes I wonder,
what would the world look like,
if each of us decided to become,
a form of love?

3. Salt by Nayyirah Waheed

My
mother
was
my first country,
The first place I ever lived.

4. My Mother’s Love by James Allen Hall

My mother feeds the multitudes of abandoned cats
that live in the field behind our office. Every sundown
she untangles fur, feline lineages. She names each one.
And though they are legion, she does not forget.
She administers heartworm medicine to one hundred
feral cats. She cradles them. Imagine her
frenzy, then, the day the bulldozers come,
a sudden god-congress in the air.
The cats hunker in their homes in the ground.
The bulldozers begin their awful roll. My mother,
at field’s edge, waves her arms, a decoy.
She stands in front of the men and their stomachs,
big rollers of flesh. She does not move, she shouts
until their faces dampen with her spit. She hears the earth
fill with mewling. She digs, she saves thirty-two cats that day,
then takes them home, bathes them, speaks to them calmly
even as they claw up and down her arms. I’m her
witness, I’m buried in this story, down in the place
where collapse is inevitable, where love is
only love if it makes you bleed.

5. Your Soul Is a River by Nikita Gill

The water of her womb, your first home.
The body she pulled apart to welcome you to the world.
The spirit in you she helped grow with all she knew.
The heart that she gave you when yours fell apart.
You are her soft miracle.
So she gave you her eyes to see the best in the worst.
You carry your mother in your eyes.
Make her proud of all she watches you do.

6. Ma by me (Rohini Kejriwal)

I have so much more to say to you.
You embody selflessness, Ma,
A quality I hope I inherit,
Perhaps leave as a legacy
If my turn should come.

You show me the virtues of simple living,
No room for complaints or judgment,
Only kindness and love.

Your purity Inspires me, Ma,
Though I don’t say it enough.

Sometimes,
I awake from dreams of you.
The pillows drenched with yearning
For a mother’s tender love.

I need to say I’m grateful
For letting me be me,
For the unconditional love and sacrifice,
For everything in between.

I need to say I’m sorry
For leaving,
And returning,
Only to leave again.

I need to say
I love you,
And thank you for everything.