Poetry for Pregnancy - National Poetry Month
Cara Terreri
April is National Poetry Month. All throughout this month, we will be sharing with you poems for different times in your childbearing journey. For centuries, people have turned to poetry in good times and bad, in celebrations and in times of grief, and in love, birth, death, and all moments of life in between. Even if you don't think of yourself as someone who particularly likes poetry, I can promise you that almost everyone can find a poem they connect with and enjoy.
Today, we're sharing our top 5 favorite poems about pregnancy. You can read more great poems about pregnancy in the source links below and by searching "poems about pregnancy."
Ultrasound
By Rachel Richardson
Novel unbegun,
half-loaf rising,
lighthouse northward
and anchor south.
Lemon to grapefruit,
you sleep-step sidewise,
turnover, pop-up,
tongue in the mouth.
Source: Poetry Foundation. Click to read more poems about pregnancy and beyond.
Song for Baby-O, Unborn
By Diane Di Prima
Sweetheart
when you break thru
you’ll find
a poet here
not quite what one would choose.
I won’t promise
you’ll never go hungry
or that you won’t be sad
on this gutted
breaking
globe
but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever
Source: Poetry Foundation. Click to read more poems about pregnancy and beyond.
Metaphors
By Sylvia Plath
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
Source: All Poetry. Click to read more poems.
Miracle of Life
By Maureen Hawkins
Before you were conceived,
I wanted you.
Before you were born,
I loved you.
Before you were here an hour,
I would give my life for you.
This is the miracle of life.
Source: Cold and Flame.
Expecting
By Kevin Young
Grave, my wife lies back, hands cross
her chest, while the doctor searches early
for your heartbeat, peach pit, unripe
plum—pulls out the world’s worst
boom box, a Mr. Microphone, to broadcast
your mother’s lifting belly.
The whoosh and bellows of mama’s body
and beneath it: nothing. Beneath
the slow stutter of her heart: nothing.
The doctor trying again to find you, fragile
fern, snowflake. Nothing.
After, my wife will say, in fear,
impatient, she went beyond her body,
this tiny room, into the ether—
for now, we spelunk for you one last time
lost canary, miner of coal
and chalk, lungs not yet black—
I hold my wife’s feet to keep her here—
and me—trying not to dive starboard
to seek you in the dark water. And there
it is: faint, an echo, faster and further
away than mother’s, all beat box
and fuzzy feedback. You are like hearing
hip-hop for the first time—power
hijacked from a lamppost—all promise.
You couldn’t sound better, break-
dancer, my favorite song bumping
from a passing car. You’ve snuck
into the club underage and stayed!
Only later, much, will your mother
begin to believe your drumming
in the distance—my Kansas City
and Congo Square, this jazz band
vamping on inside her.
Source: The New Yorker. Click to read more great poems.