For a Daughter Who Leaves
"More than gems in my comb box shaped by the
God of the Sea, I prize you, my daughter. . ."
Lady Otomo, 8th century, Japan
A woman weaves her daughter's wedding slippers that will carry her steps into a new life. The mother weeps alone into her jeweled sewing box slips red thread around its spool, the same she used to stitch her daughter's first silk jacket embroidered with turtles that would bring luck, long life. She remembers all the steps taken by her daughter's unbound quick feet: dancing on the stones of the yard among yellow butterflies and white breasted sparrows. And she grew, legs strong body long, mind independent. Now she captures all eyes with her hair combed smooth and her hips gently swaying like bamboo. The woman spins her thread from the spool of her heart, knotted to her daughter's departing wedding slippers.
Credit
Reprinted from Love Works by permission of City Lights Foundation. Copyright © 2002 by Janice Mirikitani. All rights reserved.
Author
Janice Mirikitani

Janice Mirikitani was born on February 4, 1941 in Stockton, California.
The author of five books, including Love Works (City Lights Press, 2003), Mirikitani served as the second Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2000, succeeding Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “For me,” Mirikitani said, “the role of poet is as a voice to connect with the community.”
A survivor of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, she founded San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church center for social justice with her husband, the Rev. Cecil Williams.
About Mirikitani’s work, Ken Chen noted, “She wrote a multicultural movement poetry that has been forgotten, too unaesthetic for formalists, too radical to be reduced to identity/confessionalism.”
She died on July 29, 2021 in San Francisco, CA.
Date Published: 2002-01-01
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/daughter-who-leaves