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Moon for Our Daughters

Annie Finch

1956 –

Moon that is linking our daughters’
Choices, and still more beginnings,
Threaded alive with our shadows,

These are our bodies’ own voices,
Powers of each of our bodies,
Threading, unbroken, begetting

Flowers from each of our bodies.
These are our spiraling borders
Carrying on your beginnings,

Chaining through shadows to daughters,
Moving beyond our beginnings,
Moon of our daughters, and mothers.

Annie Finch is the author of Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). She teaches online in the Poetcraft Circles and lives in Portland, Maine.

About Annie Finch

Occasion

Women's History Month

Themes

Audio

Daughters

About this Poem

“I read the first version of ‘Moon for Our Daughters’ as part of the ritual for my own menopause, around the time that my daughter was entering adolescence. Like any spell, it works best when spoken aloud.”
—Annie Finch

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More by this poet

Love in the Morning

Morning’s a new bird
stirring against me
out of a quiet nest,
coming to flight—

quick-changing,
slow-nodding,
breath-filling body,

life-holding,
waiting,
clean as clear water,

Annie Finch

2014

Gulf War and Child: A Curse

He is sleeping, his fingers curled,
his belly pooled open, his legs gathered, still
in their bent blossom victory.

I couldn't speak of "war" (though we all do),
if I were still the woman who gave birth
to you soft-footed, with your empty hand
and calling heart, that border of new clues.

May the hard birth our two heartbeats unfurled
for two nights that lasted as long as this war
make all sands rage, until the mouth of war
drops its cup, this bleeding gift we poured.

Annie Finch

1997

Landing Under Water, I See Roots

All the things we hide in water
hoping we won't see them go—
(forests growing under water
press against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love).

Annie Finch

2003

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Moon for Our Daughters

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