Oh mother, here in your lap,...

Oh mother, here in your lap, as good as a bowlful of clouds, I your greedy child am given your breast, the sea wrapped in skin, and your arms, roots covered with moss and with new shoots sticking out to tickle the laugh out of me. Yes, I am wedded to my teddy but he has the smell of you as well as the smell of me. . . . Oh mother, after this lap of childhood I will never go forth into the big people’s world as an alien, a fabrication, or falter when someone else is empty as a shoe.

From Anne Sexton, “Mothers,” quoted by Carol Tannenhauser and Cheryl Moch in “In Celebration of Babies” (Fawcett Columbine: $20; 128 pp.), selected photography and quotations.