From Margaret Fishback’s Who’s a Mother:

It’s a Promise!

May heaven help me not to bore
 My friends with talk of teething.
They’ve met such miracles before,
 Including even breathing.

They’ve seen their share of babes in bed,
 Some somnolent, some sprightly.
They’ve heard what Little Mary said,
 And oh’d and ah’d politely.

So I’ll be kind to kin and kith
 And mind my subject matter,
Unless they persecute me with
 Their own maternal chatter.

To a Small City Slicker

Dear little human dynamo
Perpetually on the go,
Your hummingbird vitality
Amazes and bedevils me.

With puckered brow and aching feet,
I chase you up and down the street.
God gave you something to be sat on,
But you must cover all Manhattan.

You’re bored, parading in your pram.
At large, you’re happy as a clam.
Oh, for a yard to set you loose,
And let me rest on my caboose!

The Stag at Eve

When Little Tarzan eats his beans
And other unattractive greens,
I give the model child a cake
As a reward, for goodness’ sake.

But when he buttons up his trap
And won’t devour a single scrap
Of foliage, do I then deny
The stubborn apple of my eye
A sweet, and let him starve? Would you?
I think, like me, you’d give him two.

Thus do I keep the toothsome brat
Luxuriously pink and fat.
And if my views are in collision
With those held by our pediatrician;
If he condemns my soft technique
As reprehensible and weak,
I’d like to have him come to dinner
And try to feed the little sinner.

Who’s Getting Pushed Around?

I love my tadpole more than breath,
Or bread, or drink. I’d suffer death,
Or pain, or illness, short or long,
To keep him flourishing and strong.
But candor forces me to say
I eagerly await the day
When some poor kindergarten teacher
Will wrestle with the little creature.

Unnatural Phenomenon

The tots I mingle with are smart.
They know the alphabet by heart
Before they even go to school.
I’ve met no kindergarten fool,
No single backward child among
My friends’ extraordinary young.
As wise as Solomon and witty
As Sullivan, they talk so pretty,
Their parents quote them left and right.
Each child’s preposterously bright.

Now tell me why, with such a crop
Of geniuses, should brilliance stop?
Why is the intellectual colt
A creature predisposed to molt?
What makes the infant master mind
Leave all precocity behind?
What happens to these baby wizards
That they should grow up mental lizards?
When all are prodigies as pups,
How come so many dull grownups?