'For My Daughters'

For My Daughter
David Ignatow

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

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In many traditional cultures, fathers and mothers would pray for a boy who would be able to help in the field. In these cultures, the value of daughter was not understood. A father has a special relationship with his daughter as she will judge all men by his standard. A mother's task is to show her daughter the complex task of growing into a woman. We no longer live in an agricultural society and woman are free to accomplish intellectually and occupationally what she couldn't in the past. She might also one day play a role as a mother and wife. Raising a daughter is an infinite gift.
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A Prayer for My Daughter

by William Butler Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid

Under this cradle-hood and coverlid

My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle

But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill

Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,

Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;

And for an hour I have walked and prayed

Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour,

And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,

And under the arches of the bridge, and scream

In the elms above the flooded stream;

Imagining in excited reverie

That the future years had come

Dancing to a frenzied drum

Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty, and yet not

Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,

Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,

Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness, and maybe

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen, being chosen, found life flat and dull,

And later had much trouble from a fool;

While that great Queen that rose out of the spray,

Being fatherless, could have her way,

Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.

It's certain that fine women eat

A crazy salad with their meat

Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;

Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned

By those that are not entirely beautiful.

Yet many, that have played the fool

For beauty's very self, has charm made wise;

And many a poor man that has roved,

Loved and thought himself beloved,

From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree,

That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,

And have no business but dispensing round

Their magnanimities of sound;

Nor but in merriment begin a chase,

Nor but in merriment a quarrel.

Oh, may she live like some green laurel

Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,

The sort of beauty that I have approved,

Prosper but little, has dried up of late,

Yet knows that to be choked with hate

May well be of all evil chances chief.

If there's no hatred in a mind

Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,

So let her think opinions are accursed.

Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,

Because of her opinionated mind

Barter that horn and every good

By quiet natures understood

For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,

The soul recovers radical innocence

And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,

And that its own sweet will is heaven's will,

She can, though every face should scowl

And every windy quarter howl

Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house

Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;

For arrogance and hatred are the wares

Peddled in the thoroughfares.

How but in custom and in ceremony

Are innocence and beauty born?

Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,

And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

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Daughter
by James Lenfestey

A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent,

holding earth and sky together with her shadow.

She sleeps upstairs like mystery in a story,

blowing leaves down the stairs, then cold air, then warm.
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What Is Supposed To Happen
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When you were small,
we watched you sleeping,
waves of breath
filling your chest.
Sometimes we hid behind
the wall of baby, soft cradle
of baby needs.
I loved carrying you between
my own body and the world.
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You Begin
by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.