Babies

All Poems, Animals/Insects, Babies, Birth, For Children, Love, Mother Love, Parent Love, Stories

What Is It About Geese in a Pond?

Posted on

What is it about geese in a pond?

Luring me toward them?

Multiple times a day?

To observe, snap photos?

Is it the goose honking each morning from a rooftop?

Announcing something new?

First the emergence of goslings.

Then, parents teaching them to swim.

Or, is it my own curiosity?

Admiration for these birds?

Calmly awaiting hatching?

Mother on her nest for weeks.

Father on duty around her.

Protecting his mate, progeny.

From outside threats.

Is it the way they pull together?

Now that the brood, born.

Both teaching chicks to glide upon water.

Withstand vagaries of weather.

Sunshine, clouds, drizzles, downpours.

Know when to nudge their small ones into naps?

All piling in under mother’s ample wing.

Hidden from prying eyes.

Instructing them to poke, peck for food?

While father continues his patrol, hissing at intruders.

What is it about geese?

A dedicated conjugal pair

prioritizing their young.

Collaborating tranquilly,

imparting inspiration.

 

Lynn Benjamin

April 28, 2024

All Poems, Babies, Change, Creation, Emotions, Mother Love, Parent Love, Pleasure

Nativity

Posted on

 

The excitement in your voice rushed, a current.

Swirling, vibrating in tiny circles.

Full of energy, passion.

Recounting nativity on Christmas Eve.

Your first granddaughter.

Invitation to dip a hand, toe.

Feel the motion.

Connect with it.

It pulled me back.

To the birth of my first grandchild.

The sense of awe.

A tiny newborn.

From the loins of my child

Evolution of seed and egg.

Sliding into light.

Before my eyes.

Witness to a new generation.

Unfolding at its own pace.

Overlapping chronologies.

As I paddle to the finish line.

The infant bathing by the shore.

High spirits exhilarate.

Cascade to and fro in time.

Blur boundaries between beginnings.

Rippling, they intertwine.

 

Lynn Benjamin

December 31, 2023

 

 

Adult Children, All Poems, Babies, Children, Family, Grandchildren, Parent Love

How Do They Do It?

Posted on

 

How do my son and his wife do it? I think to myself.

As I watch their three young boys whirl about.

Little twisters twirling from pillar to post.

Climbing, skipping, jumping.

Drawing, coloring, cutting.

Building sharing, quarreling.

Needing a dozen things at once.

Needing octopi parents.

As many arms as possible.

To feed, comfort, dress, entertain.

Clean up, intervene, wash hands, dry spills.

Bathe, read stories, play, put to bed.

I’m not the only one who wonders how.

A new neighbor stops to chat.

Says he sees they’re in the thick of it.

Unlike he, who now has older teens.

And I, whose adult children have their own.

Most people survive the thickness.

My son and his wife, resolute.

Through thickets green with promise,

ripening robust, juicy fruit.

 

Lynn Benjamin

November 25, 2023

Adult Children, All Poems, Babies, Career, Family, Memories, Mother Love, Spirituality

Twelfth of September

Posted on

 

It’s the twelfth of September.

Due date of my first baby.

Is it womb or mind remembering back that far?

Forty-nine years ago?

The day I thought I’d become a mother.

Though she was born two weeks later.

Yom Kippur, September 26th.

Long, hot interminable days.

Passing time.

Celebrating Rosh Hashanah.

Moving to a bigger apartment.

Organizing a room for baby.

Crib, changing table, bathtub.

Adding washer, dryer to the kitchen.

Like today, we lived in Elkins Park.

A memory catching me unaware.

Smells, sounds, sensations must have been the same.

Days shortening.

Begonias, impaciens becoming mums.

A few leaves turning yellow or red.

But, for me, then, days never ended.

Each one, the same.

Something about pregnancy draws you inward.

Away from changes outside.

Until that final push.

The one that, again, forces you outward.

To new life.

Hiccups, startles, wails.

Rhythms anchoring your day.

Attunement, synchrony.

Nurturing, giving, learning.

I was vigilant those high holy days.

Waiting, taking stock of myself.

Yom Kippur, laboring.

Not thinking what it might mean to give birth on a holy day.

How it might catapult this baby into the pastorate.

Many years later.

After bearing her own children.

Finding comfort in ancient hymns.

Community.

Regularity.

Laws, ethics.

Who would have guessed that being born

on a day of fast, confession,

would lead the child, years from now,

to a sacred, old profession?

I relaxed while laboring

with cleansing breaths and pants.

Now my daughter uplifts spirits

with the prayers she chants.

 

Lynn Benjamin

September 13, 2023

 

 

All Poems, Babies, Farewell, Humor

Unceremonious Farewell

Posted on

 

It was an unceremonious farewell.

To a high chair we housed for forty-eight years.

Peg Perego.

Beige faux leather.

Sturdy, safe, cushioned.

Easy to fold up, extend, adjust.

Trendy in its time.

When our first child began to sit.

Eat scraps from the table.

Bananas, apples bread balls.

Even eggplant parmigiana.

Then her three brothers.

One after the next.

Finally, most grandchildren.

The last one, Solomon.

In early April, Pesach.

It’s been cleaned, put away dozens of times.

Stored in closets.

But, finally, the upholstery rubbed off with scrubbing.

Crumbs clung in crevices.

Time told us to part ways.

With our esteemed chair.

So, Bob toted it to the township

to express his last goodbye.

Told it wasn’t simply trash.

But with recycles, qualify.

Relieved, he returned to tell me.

The parts could be reused.

Both imagined spare parts art.

Woe converted to amused.

 

Lynn Benjamin

May 7, 2023

 

 

Aging, All Poems, Babies, Family, Grandchildren, O'ahu/Honolulu, Santa Monica 3/23, Trips and Places

Two Days in Honolulu

Posted on

 

Two days in Honolulu.

The day before our flight, Arthur, two, made a pronouncement.

As he headed upstairs to the toy room.

Someone keep an eye on me.

But then he glanced at Bob and me, grandparents.

Added, not old eyes.

We laughed in the kitchen.

For we understood.

He wanted his parents’ younger eyes on him.

Our old eyes were to leave for Hawaii.

An old island.

To spend a day with old friends.

Exploring an old culture.

Toddlers are drawn to familiar, smooth.

While we have corrugated skin.

They have not learned it yet.

But, experience lies within.

 

Lynn Benjamin

March 10, 2023

 

All Poems, Babies, Children, Family, Grandchildren, Santa Monica 3/23, Time, Trips and Places

Time Darts Away

Posted on

 

Time darts away in Santa Monica.

Like hummingbirds do.

Hovering over blooms.

Moving on to the next.

Then disappearing with a flap of wings.

Impossible to catch with a camera.

Gone.

Out of sight.

Like days here.

Why does night descend before you blink?

Perhaps three boys consume the minutes.

Gobble them up.

In their whirlwind.

Birthday parties.

Visits to the playground.

Ripping open household packages.

Inventing rocket ships.

Building magna tiles.

Inhaling meals.

Running in circles.

Knocking over things in their path.

Add up the minutes.

Day vanishes.

Barely a second to relax.

When the baby smiles, it’s a thank you

for everything you do.

Pause the bustle, smile back.

Parent-infant rendezvous.

Your toddler thinks he’s grown up.

Likes to trick and joke.

While Mister Four craves projects

to tie and pin and poke.

Each in his way tells you

that these days of jump and fetch

pollinate the future.

Grow boys who sprout and stretch.

 

Lynn Benjamin

March 8, 2023

 

 

 

All Poems, Babies, Memories, Parent Love, Stories

Someone Remembers a Scene

Posted on

 

Every once in a blue moon, someone remembers a scene.

Something I don’t necessarily recall.

Or something that jogs my memory.

When the opportunity presents for the telling, it’s magical.

A droplet pulled from the mist.

Like yesterday, when I showed my old friend photos.

Of my children and grands.

She studied the one of Zev.

Sitting at my kitchen table.

Look at that face, she exclaimed.

So sweet! I have a frozen image in my mind.

From over thirty-five years ago.

At a Parents’ Network dinner.

You were at a table in the front.

Bob was in the back, cradling baby Zev.

Back and forth. So nurturing.

I conjured the picture.

I could see it perfectly.

It fit, like Cinderella’s slipper.

I wanted Zev to see it, too.

To know how much we adored him.

Attended to him.

Toted him everywhere.

So, Zev, though now a man

deciding which route to go,

you always roused our hearts, our arms,

our spirits with zestful glow.

 

Lynn Benjamin

December 2, 2022

 

All Poems, Babies, Death, Family, Love

Roses

Posted on

Roses of yesterday were beauties,
they grew in the countryside.
Fragrant and free they blossomed,
they laughed and sang and cried.

Roses of yesterday sang softly
in the wind of the countryside.
Early and wild they blossomed
and, in full bloom, they died.

But yesterday’s Roses are tomorrow’s,
resown in a garden of love,
nourished with tears of days gone
and warmed by a song from above.

Lynn Benjamin

June, 1975

Roseanne, nine months when this poem was written, was named after my cousin Rose Ann, who was killed in a car accident as a young woman. She was a folksinger whom everyone loved.