11 of the Best Mother’s Day Poems 

Some speak on moments lost to time, others to future, happier meetings between children and their mothers, while others still simply celebrate the role that a mother played in a child’s life. 

To My Mother by George Barker

‘To My Mother’ is an elegy for the speaker’s deceased mother. It Includes his recollections of her and the reasons that he’s going to miss having her around. He’s working through his loss in the lines of this piece as he compares his mother to geographical features like mountains and continents in order to depict her importance in his life. 

Most near, most dear, most loved and most far,

Under the window where I often found her

Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,

Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,

On Mother’s Day by Bruce Lansky 

This short poem describes what’s not “smart” to do on mother’s day. The speaker lists out several things, including “Don’t tell her smoking’s cool” and “Don’t tell her when you’re grown you’ll be / A starving poet.” Here are a few more lines: 

On Mother’s Day it isn’t smart

To give your mom a broken heart.

So here are thing you shouldn’t say

To dear old mom on Mother’s Day […]

To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible by Anna Lætitia Barbauld 

This poem is directed to an unborn child, one that the speaker is desperately excited to meet. She celebrates the life the child is going to live and how much joy they’re going to bring everyone. Here are lines from the third stanza:

And see, the genial season’s warmth to share,

Fresh younglings shoot, and opening roses glow!

Swarms of new life exulting fill the air,—

Haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow!

Ending the Estrangement by Ross Gay

This poem is slightly different than others on this list in that the speaker is depicting his reconciliation with his mother after a long period of time. The first lines read:

from my mother’s sadness, which was,

to me, unbearable, until,

it felt to me

not like what I thought it felt like

to her, and so felt inside myself—like death

The Mothering Blackness by Maya Angelou

In this memorable poem, Angelou uses repetition to emphasize Black motherhood and childhood. The three stanzas present different images of Blackness while depicting a female character headed home into “mothering blackness” and “black arms waiting.” Here are some lines from stanza two: 

She came down creeping

here to the black arms waiting

now to the warm heart waiting

rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face

Mother’s Song by Shirley Lim 

Throughout this poem, Lim’s speaker addresses a man who starts out as a baby and grows up, eventually described as having gray hair. The speaker takes a gentle and celebratory tone while depicting her child’s milestones. 

Beautiful man, milk teeth bared in a trap,

Whose mouth curls in despair,

She smiles at your face.

My Mother’s Kitchen by Choman Hardi 

In this anecdotal poem, the speaker explores the items that a mother is handing down to her daughter when she moves away. She’s willing to give these things up and start from scratch. Here are the first lines:

I will inherit my mother’s kitchen,

her glasses, some tall and lean others short and fat

Not Here by Jane Kenyon 

The poet uses imagery in these lines to depict an incident with mice and her mourning for a lost generation of women and lost lives. The mice are used as a metaphor for those same women. Here are the first four lines of the second stanza: 

Tufts of fibers, droppings like black

caraway seeds, and the stains of birth

and afterbirth give off the strong

unforgettable attar of mouse

To Any Reader by Robert Louis Stevenson 

In ‘To Any Reader,’ Stevenson depicts a mother imagining her child playing while at the same time depicting the speaker as someone who grown out of childhood. He’s no longer that young boy, he’s a man and “a child of air / That lingers in the garden there.” Stevenson uses the second person “you” throughout the peace, allowing the reader to feel as though they are part of the poem. Here are the first four lines: 

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Rock Me to Sleep by Elizabeth Akers Allen

This loving poem is a tribute to the poet’s mother. She depicts her longing to go back in time and return to her childhood where she could live freely without worries. There, she’d loved the simplicities of the time. Here are the first four lines: 

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes 

In this well-loved poem, a speaker addresses her son, informing him of all the struggles he’s sure to face throughout his life. It was first published in 1922 and has since become a classic and one of Hughes’ most commonly studied poems. This is due in part to the fact that readers from different backgrounds are able to connect to what’s being described in the lines. Here is a section from the beginning of the poem: 

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—