Keepsakes
I kept my childrens
baby teeth,
several of their 000-sized suits,
the lambskin they all slept upon,
the rubber mouse they teethed upon,
the booties that first warmed their newborn feet.
I saved three locks of
baby hair
(mementos of how fair and fey they were
)
and albums full of milestone photographs
that hinge together fragments of their pasts
But I couldnt keep their baby hands and feet
Yet now I find that other
mothers can!
At stalls set up in shopping malls,
sculptors coat with rubber-latex paste
infants furrowed wrists and half-clenched fists
(thumbs tucked in, a finger caught uncurling)
And the strange crazed
soles, splayed toes, of infant feet.
They peel the moulds off deftly once theyre set,
pack them with a polymorphous mix,
paint the turned-out treasures antique gold
and mount them in a frame against time passing.
Stilled before these
priceless miniatures,
I contemplate afresh my newborns feet -
their stretch-and-flex, their tissue-paper crinkledness -
the tiny mass that was each daughters fist,
the moving artistry of small pink fingers.
©Lesley Walter*
*Lesley Walter is a contemporary Sydney poet whose
collection of
motherhood poems, watermelon baby, is available through
Five Islands Press
(PO Box U34, Wollongong University, 2500). |