With Child

I begin to avoid

the news, bombings and

kidnappings and hijackings,

snipers, terrorists, assassins,

volcanoes, mud flows, earthquakes,

plane crashes and traffic accidents.

I can no longer face

 street people, the bums,

the homeless, the runaways,

the ruined faces I used to ponder,

the outstretched hand into which

I put change, so little to ask.

Now it seems all too much

and I'm still narrowing;

no horror movies,

cops and robbers,

cowboys and Indians,

Nazis and Japanese and G.I. Joe,

holocause and famine documentaries.

I shun arguments, conflict,

negative people.

Folk cultures the world over

urge pregnant women to avoid

gazing upon ugly things,

which make their mark

upon the child. And now

experts tell us how

chemical messages

stimulated by our emotions

can disturb our babies in utero...

Superstition or good sense,

illusion of control,

it feels right to filter,

keep the world at bay

for a time:

I am preparing a room for my child.

Suffering, misfortune, calamities,

ye may not enter here.

===========

I wrote this poem when I was pregnant with my first child.......almost exactly 21 years ago! I found that I did have illusions; we can only protect our children so much...though at the same time, we're more powerful than we think! Maybe they are necessary illusions, for if we feel defenseless, we might lose courage. 

I still believe that pregnancy is a special time and we should do our best to take care of our bodies and spirits and nurture our relationship with our unborn child.

 This poem was collected in MAMA STEW, AN ANTHOLOGY: REFLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ON MOTHERING, Edited by Elisabeth Rotchford Haight and Sylvia Platt, Mama Stew Press, 2002. You can find in on www.Amazon.com.

 Blessings on your pregnancy and birth and parenting experiences!