Moon for Our Daughters

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.

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

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).

Poems

Moon for Our Daughters

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Love in the Morning

Gulf War and Child: A Curse

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Moon for Our Daughters

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