3poems & readings

New Baby Poems

Ten tiny fingers and a houseful of awe: poems for birth announcements, baby showers, and the bleary, miraculous first weeks.

Nothing recruits non-poets like a newborn — people who haven't rhymed since school suddenly need words for the staggering ordinariness of ten fingers and a heartbeat. The traditional form is the blessing: short lines wishing the child wonder, courage, kindness, and sleep (the last one mostly for the parents). Blake addressed his 'Infant Joy' to a baby two days old; the genre hasn't aged a day since.

For cards, the working formula is welcome plus reinforcement: greet the baby by name, congratulate the parents, and attach something practical — a meal, an errand, a babysitting voucher. A two-line verse with a casserole behind it beats a sonnet arriving empty-handed.