Poem for a Daughter

“I think I’m going to have it,”

I said, joking between pains.

The midwife rolled competent

sleeves over corpulent milky arms.

“Dear, you never have it,

we deliver it.”

A judgement years proved true.

Certainly I’ve never had you

;’

as you still have me, Caroline.

Why does a mother need a daughter?

Heart’s needle, hostage to fortune,

freedom’s end. Yet nothing’s more perfect

than that bleating, razor-sharp cry

that delivers a mother to her baby.

The bloodcord snaps that held

their sphere together. The child,

tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman’s life is her own

until it is taken away

by a first particular cry.

Then she is not alone

but part of the premises

if everything there is:

a time, a tribe, a war.

When we belong to the world

we become what we are.

-- Anne Stevenson