Mothers be good to your daughters

I was so taken with this little one (from Magpie Patterns). Doesn't it look like a lost Vermeer portrait?
One of my great loves is feminist poets writing on the subject of daughters; I think the mother-daughter relationship is the most complex, symbiotic and important human relationship there is, and I thought Audre Lorde's gorgeous poem a nice complement to this picture.


Now That I Am Forever With Child

By Audre Lorde

How the days went
while you were blooming within me
I remember each upon each---
the swelling changed planes of my body
and how you first fluttered, then jumped
and I thought it was my heart.

How the days wound down
and the turning of winter
I recall, with you growing heavy
against the wind. I thought
now her hands
are formed, and her hair
has started to curl
now her teeth are done
now she sneezes.
Then the seed opened
I bore you one morning just before spring
My head rang like a fiery piston
my legs were towers between which
A new world was passing
Since then
I can only distinguish
one thread within running hours
You, flowing through selves
toward You.