A Poem for My Daughter

I don't tell a lot of people this (although this blog is public) but I really like to write poetry. I took a long break from it, because raising children is hard and, for me, requires a lot of the same creative energy that I need to write poems. However, blogging seems to have sparked it a little, and I've written several in the last few days. Here is one that I wrote yesterday. I hope you enjoy it and if you do, you are welcome to share it. Please give me credit if you do.

My daughter

You are transitioning the world

Like a seed, just before sprouting

All splitting and dying

All feathery roots and fear of frost

Breaking through into something

Pale and green and sensitive.

But the delicacy is a lie

Or not a lie, but not reality either

Because inside the fragile

The vulnerable

The fear of frost

Is something sharp

Tough and safe and wild and divine

Unbreakable by outside influence

It’s your heart and it is yours

Your spiritual DNA

Given by no man and completely fireproof.

Sprout, daughter.

Fly skyward and transform

Roots to rhizomes

Covering the earth

Adapting to where you are but refusing

To alter yourself

Except how it suits you.

Redefining the landscape

Changing the flow and the conversation

Creating the world you need

For yourself

And your children

Because you, my daughter

Are not a flower

Sedate and orderly and cultivated by man

For man’s purposes

Your fragrance is not suitable for perfumes

Too luxuriant and savage

Too unspoiled and feral

You, daughter

Like your mother before you

Are a weed.