National Poetry Month strikes again

You know, when I said the other day that I hadn't come across any poems since early in the month, I was pretending to be disappointed that my pledge - to not completely ignore poetry this month - wasn't coming to much. But then last night someone posted some Sylvia Plath in her blog, and while I really liked The Bell Jar, I was not looking forward to suffering through actual poetry. I could feel my mind wandering at the first lines:

"Mirror"

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike .
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

But by the time I finished, I was really enjoying myself. The imagery is nice and not too vague. It's not a difficult poem to read. I mean, I'm sure people have written theses about it and I'm sure you can delve really deep into its meaning or some such thing, but I liked it.

Even better though:

And this is my favorite part of the poem, again from the First Voice -- I put it on the birth announcements of my last baby, Luka.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him. May he keep so.

That's just nice, and it makes my heart feel big and swollen and nice and happy and full of love because I've had a child, and it's always nice when someone expresses my feelings better than I ever could.

Five more days! What horrors will National Poetry Month inflict upon me NEXT?!?!