Nursing at the Breast of Life

For Sandra, Loryn & Hanna, Joanne, Emma & Addy, and Erika, Emma & Kate

Golden child at snowy breast; milk filled orb of ecstasy
Center of her universe, from which she draws her sustenance…Motherhood and dedication, love of child personified
Fulfillment of her womanhood, in putting worldly cares aside…

Devotion to soft infants sounds, small hands lie curled caressing
Of bond so timeless and profound that history repeats its message…

Since ancient times when mothers knew of tears and joys of infanthood
Of moments spent in quiet peace instilling poetry of food…

Love made by and for her newborn sweet, rosebud mouth and suckling sounds
Can there be a joy so rare locked within a time profound? …

Born of common need to nourish, a systole of tandem hearts
Be given and received in kind; twain lives with ‘twining parts…

Banquet of joy, food and spirituality wrapped
within the arms of woman…

Held within her timeless and nurturing caress
A perfect circle of love…Mother with child at the breast…

Carol Holmes Keene

Copyright ©2004 Carol Holmes Keene

Carol is a HypnoBirthingChildbirthEducator (HBCE) and a Lactation Consultant.   She is also a retired Labor and Delivery RN.   The poem “Nursing at the Breast of Life” was inspired after she attended the birth of her niece’s baby.   Carol tells that she was driving home after assisting mother and child and she was happy because both were doing so well.  The line “perfect circle of life, mother with child at the breast” popped into her head, she quickly wrote it down and the remainder of the poem “just flowed out of her.”

Thank you Carol for allowing me to share your poem with everybody.  Stella