Sonnet

Navel-Gazing

by Joanna Pearson

The baby, bath-time belly glistening, shows
his center mark, that cicatricial gash
the mystics contemplated as a rose,
omphalic core, a mandala. He’ll splash
bright soapy rings and circlets in the tub.
His tummy glints round nuclei of light.
Leaning towards her slippery son to scrub,
the mother thinks of buds or seeds, the tight
and knotted body of an unhusked snail
when her hands glaze his perfect belly button.
And then he laughs, his small mouth like a bell.
She feels the resonance, its spreading sudden,
and reaching for the towel, feels the pull
of love like fossil pools — deep, umbilical.

“Navel-Gazing” by Joanna Pearson follows the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet (three quatrains of ABABCDCDEFEF and then a rhyming couplet GG). Pearson modifies the Shakespearean sonnet by having a shift in line 7. The poem shifts from describing the baby to describing the mother. I think this turn was effective in line 7 because it helped me to see that the poem is not about a weird person who really likes describing baby bellies during bath time, but rather about a caring mother who observes and adores all aspects of her baby. There’s a second shift in line 11 where the speaker moves away from describing the baby’s belly to describing the baby’s laugh, the baby’s mouth, and the mother’s love. This adds to what I said before about the poem expressing a mother’s observation and adoration for her baby. I chose this sonnet because it had a cute picture of a baby next to it. I’m not even kidding. Also, I wanted to analyze a light hearted poem and this was just that. What does this poem mean? Babies are perfect with their glistening bellies and bell-like mouths. Mothers love those things about their babies. 

Visit this page to see the poem and the picture of the baby: http://www.14by14.com/Sonnets/August2011/Navel-Gazing.html