I Love All The Mom Bodies at This Beach

The title of today's post comes from Ode, a poem by Elizabeth Alexander, from her book American Sublime:

I love all the mom bodies at this beach,
the tummies, the one-piece bathing suits,
the bosoms that slope, the wide nice bottoms,
thigh flesh shirred as gentle wind shirrs a pond.

So many sensible haircuts and ponytails!
These bodies show they have grown babies, then
nourished them, woken to their cries, fretted
at their fevers. Biceps have lifted and toted

the babies now printed on their mothers.
"If you lined up a hundred bodies,
I could tell you which ones have borne children,"
the midwife says. In the secret place or

in sunlight at the beach, our bodies say
this is who we are, no, This is what
we have done and continue to do.
We labor in love. We do it. We mother.

You can peruse our tributes to Mothers and Fragrances which either remind us of them, or which we will pass on to our children, on these links on Perfume Shrine:
Mothers and Kids and the Scents that Bind us Together
The Indefineable Allure of a Signature Scent

Poem brought to my attention by Bergamot/POL
Pic sent to me by the good people at Hermes.