This week we’ve a wonderfully lyrical poem for you from Dispatches from New Motherhood. In DARKNESS AND LIGHT Jenny Fisken takes us into a world that’s poetic in the keenest sense – full of feeling and imagination and connectivity with the natural world.
‘Writing has given me a way to collect my thoughts and connect with my emotions at a time when my experiences could sometimes be overwhelming,’ says Jenny. ‘Putting pen to paper, most of the time just for me, has been such a comfort. My other solace has always been the natural world around me and it provided me with space to breath in the first year of being a mum. Noticing small changes and small details has a real calming influence on my state of mind. I found that I applied this to my son too: the enormity of motherhood can be overwhelming so I focused on details, looked at him in parts – his smile, his eyelashes, the curl of his hair – and I tried to feature these feelings in my poem.’
All the contributors to our Mothership Writers anthology went through an editing process with their pieces, and for almost all this was a new experience. Jenny says ‘I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the editing. Really contemplating the flow of a line or spending a significant amount of time thinking about just one word was like meditation and something I continue to do now.’
The result is a poignant and transporting study of a mother and her baby’s first year, and the change undergone by both.
***
DARKNESS AND LIGHT
Jenny Fisken
You begin in the veiled darkness of winter,
A night full of stars in a sky black as grief.
Venus, resolute and constant amidst old winking light,
Whispers your name before I know it on my own lips.
Born in the night, the world heavy with sleep,
From inside to outside,
Skin on skin on skin.
Nothing but instinct, unable to fathom your own limit,
Your centre a heart of frenzied wingbeats.
We nest until springtime,
Warm blankets and the gentle rise and fall of miraculous breath.
Poking our heads into low yellow sunlight,
We are white snowdrops from the warm earth;
Our bodies uncoiling fern fronds,
Casting long shadows on an Earth that doesn’t know us yet.
Gentle blossom gladdens dark limbs
Becoming a cathedral of comfort and sleep;
The birdsong your lullaby.
I wonder at your defined edges as you learn to inhabit your body,
The summer sun filling it with light,
Your smile reflecting the radiance.
Sea-salted skin from the vastness of oceans
Provokes anxiety to rise all the more readily in my body,
Like the electric feel of the air before a storm.
But there’s such comfort when you sleep cradled in my arms
Though you are no longer sustained solely by my body
And we are you and me.
With trees like fire, autumn mirrors the sunset
And wings once stretched out to catch the sunlight
Fold back down and prepare for rest.
Berry jewels stain our chins purple
And you’re gleefully impatient for the world;
You can’t walk but you dance,
You can’t speak but you sing.
I stay close to the trees so I can’t see the woods,
I know the enormity would overwhelm me.
And every morning you touch my mouth, my eyes, my hair,
Checking I’m unchanged
As the darkness of winter pours in like spilled ink,
A tangible coolness seeping into every cell of my body.
But I’m not afraid of the dark,
I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again;
Like an old friend reminding me of days gone by
That I no longer mourn
Because now I’m facing in the right direction.
***
Darkness and Light by Jenny Fisken appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.