This is a collection of poetry that movingly illustrates many aspects of motherhood and, if you are a poetry lover, there is much that you will find appealing and thought-provoking. In the first half of the book, the poems by Magdalena Ball have a cosmic quality to them and some wonderful imagery. In the poem 'Coil of Life', for example, giving birth is described as the 'Big Bang' and in 'Assault by a Black Hole', the reader is taken on a journey from the sublime to the commonplace and you can't help but smile:

A powerful jet from a black hole

is blasting nearby galaxy 3C321

with outrageous galactic violence

x-rays, gamma rays

particles travelling the speed of light

tearing ozone layers

destroying alien life forms

and breeding new star systems

a million primordial sons

in the lethal pummelling.

Talk about tough love.

In the face of that million year

assault

(a fraction of the system’s lifetime)

I suppose I have no right

to complain

about one smart, sharp smack

sent my way

to facilitate a few manners.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's poems have, by contrast, a homely down-to-earthness which also appeals. I loved her description of dandelion petals in the poem 'Dandelions in Autumn':

Yellow petals, pollen-soft

like monarchs' wings.

Little lions' manes

like illustrations in childrens'

books, not like roaring

Serengeti cats

or the MGM logo lion, harmless

these. I pick them, bunch them,

hold them under Mama's chin

to see if they light her throat

yellow, and if they do, delight!

In the poem 'Musing Over a New Calendar', the author reflects on the passage of time - how there is still so much she wants to do and see, yet her ageing mother is 'alone, rejecting all but her home'. I felt the author's pain in these lines as I did in the poem 'Mother and Daughter' where she describes her job of 'mothering again', but this time it is not her children who need her help but her own elderly mother:

...I take over seatbelt

duties, step ahead of her then stop,

reluctant for her to know she's slow.

We all forget names, I say as numb

moves from hand to heart

because it is my name she has forgotten.

Yet, despite such painful memories and associations, perhaps the strongest is the 'eternal warmth' of our mother's bed – as Ms. Ball puts it – 'a shared space/ free from the ticking illusion/ of time, motion and change./ Here, where you are always welcome/ nothing matters/ except this peace/ this place/ containing every possible now.'