Curated original poetry
Match the poem to the relationship and setting: warm and brief for a card, specific and grateful for a private note, or spacious enough for a family reading.
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Find your poem
17 poems
by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
The flowers arrived on time. The card used my best handwriting. We laughed through dinner,
Read, listen and shareby The Devotional Voice · 14 lines
Bless the mother holding a sleepy child. Bless the woman who mothered without being called mother.
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
Call me when you arrive, I tell my grown son, then pretend the sentence
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
The recipe card had three generations crowded in its margins. You added your note in green:
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 13 lines
The baby sleeps through breakfast. Your coffee cools untouched. A card leans open by the fruit,
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
My mother's faith was rarely loud. It lived in lunches wrapped at dawn, a name kept on the prayer list,
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
I knew her hands in motion: buttoning, chopping, braiding, mending,
Read, listen and shareby The Quiet Voice · 11 lines
My mother's voicemail says hello with no knowledge of the future. She is probably in the garden,
Read, listen and shareby The Quiet Voice · 10 lines
Milk, lemons, soap, her handwriting leaning forward as if the paper were a hill.
Read, listen and shareby The Bright Voice · 12 lines
I have her laugh— the sudden kind that startles birds from hedges
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
Before language, there was her voice— not words, but weather: hum in the dark,
Read, listen and shareby The Quiet Voice · 12 lines
I bring no flowers. She preferred tomatoes, new pencils,
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
She did not keep me small. She kept the door: oiled the hinge,
Read, listen and shareby The Quiet Voice · 11 lines
Each birthday I grow older. My mother stays sixty-two, laughing in the last photograph
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
The boy left muddy shoes beneath every chair. The man lines his boots
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
Two mothers at the doorway, each holding something wrapped, each pretending not to worry
Read, listen and shareby The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
She calls to ask about rain, whether the boiler settled, if I found the blue receipt.
Read, listen and shareReader guide
Match the poem to the relationship and setting: warm and brief for a card, specific and grateful for a private note, or spacious enough for a family reading.
A poem can look right on a screen and feel wrong in the mouth. Read your shortlist aloud, notice where the voice catches, and choose the piece that sounds like something you could honestly give or say.
Use the original byline and link when sharing. For a public service, program, classroom, or publication, check the usage note and preserve the poem's line breaks.
Start with the intended use, then narrow by tone and length. A private message can be intimate; a public reading usually needs a clear opening, steady pace, and images listeners can understand immediately.
You may share an EveryPoem link or use the built-in personal print and share-card tools. Republishing the full text elsewhere or using it commercially requires permission.
Yes. Published pieces are original EveryPoem editorial works or approved contributor submissions. House-voice profiles explain how collaborative editorial bylines work.