gentle mother (new poem with Poet's comments)

"gentle mother"
by tim kavi

(a poem for my mother on her 80th birthday)

gentle mother
sings softly
her smiling face
in view

pink babies
look back
gentle mother
grateful for the likes
of you

breezes soft
as rose petals
with garments
warm and blue

as my gentle
mother guides
each day anew

later I watch
graceful dealings
constant revealings
of a love
so true

always life long
we remember
our mothers

for how can we
forget
their comforts
when away
our troubles flew?

oh my gentle
mother
without you
what would I do?

lost hopelessly
in flight
from the nest
but your sweet guidance
is always there,

from the one who
loves me the best!

Poet's comment's

this poem was written live on my mother's 80th birthday. After writing it on her birthday, I then read it aloud to her on her special day. (Now about five weeks ago). My mom has been a very important person in my life. Much of my compassion for others comes from her.

There is a change in person in the middle of this poem and it is intentional. It switches from a third person point of view (babies) to an assertion of self (first person), and how a mother is perceived. It is an intentional shift, because in a sense we assert an independent identity and sense of self as we relate to our mothers and other early caregivers.

You can see that shift in the last few stanzas of the poem which includes terms like 'I" and "me". In psychology, there is a theoiry called object relations theory. Although I cannot discuss the theory itself in a fuller sense, it basically states that the role of the mother (or a nurturing other) is so important to infantile development that the baby's sense of self begins to develop as he or she peers/experiences the mother and begins to see her as another person distinct and seperate from themselves. As the infant develops and this is a loving interaction, the infant feels more secure in their separation from others and begins also to define themselves as a separate person.

In this poem, when I sat down to write I tried to imagine this process in a sense, how it might feel to be a loved baby and then to feel that sense of perceiving a loved and loving mother.

That is why the poem ends the way it does with a sense of self asserted so strongly. There is much more sentiment of appreciation in the poem such as a lifelong sense of feeling cared for as well. -- T.K.