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are decorations on the bedding of the crib or the rosy cheeks from which the moth-breath flickers. My notions of that far sea sound likewise flicker between the sounds I used to hear when placing a seashell to my ear and vague notions of the timelessness of motherhood and its responsibilities. (I also recall all the sea references in Arnold's "Dover Beach": the grating roar, the tremulous cadence, the eternal note of sadness, heard long ago on the Aegean as it is centuries later on the English Channel. But that's just this reader's problem.)

Stanza five is less perplexing. The listening mother responds to the baby's cry, stumbles heavy-breasted in her floral nightgown that influenced my earlier perception of those flat pink roses, and presumably breast feeds the infant.

Dawn's brightness drives the stars from the window square where the speaker/mother had been sleeplessly watching and waiting. The happy infant now choruses with its "handful of notes;/ The clear vowels rise like balloons." How can rising balloons suggest anything other than joy and contentment?

This provocative poem presents free verse as poetry packed with both clear meaning and vague suggestion to tease us into thought. Every sentence contains figurative language requiring interpretation, which will vary from reader to reader. Even the clear language of line two: "The midwife slapped your footsoles" is completed with the synesthesia of "your bald cry." Most infants are nearly bald. All infants cry. But what is a bald cry?

The poems title is also a subject for interpretation. The poetic term aubade usually refers to a morning song in which lovers wish that the "busy old fool, unruly sun" should go away and allow for further lovemaking. This is not an aubade. It is a morning love song of mother to new-born infant. The music is reserved for the final stanza where the minor-chord suggestions of post-partum depression modulate and resolve into a balloon ride.

Learn more about this author, Kerry Michael Wood.
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