Poetry in April: Feel the Love

April is National Poetry Month, so all this month, Bonny, Kat, Kym, and I are sharing some poetry on Thursdays. This week's theme is love, and while there's a ton of poetry out there related to romantic love, my thoughts turned to a different kind -- that of a parent for their child. I think this sort of love is so unlike any other, especially when it's a mother's love. So today's poem is written by a mother (poet Sharon Olds) for her child, and it captures some of the feelings I have begun to have as my daughter has gotten older.

Exclusive
   (for my daughter)

I lie on the beach, watching you
as you lie on the beach, memorizing you
against the time when you will not be with me:
your empurpled lips, swollen in the sun
and smooth as the inner lips of shell;
your biscuit-gold skin, glazed and
faintly pitted like the surface of a biscuit;
the serious knotted twine of your hair.
I have loved you instead of anyone else,
love you as a way of loving no one else,
every separate grain of your body
building the god, as you were built within me,
a sealed world. What if from you lips
I had learned the love of other lips,
from you starred, gummed lashes the love of
other lashes, from your shut, quivering
eyes the love of other eyes,
from you body the bodies,
from your life the lives?
Today I see it is there to be learned from you:
to love what I do not own.

Be sure to visit Kym, Kat, and Bonny today for their selections!