A Daughter Comes Home. . . another poem

[katbuad]

Ok guys, I promise I will stop after I post this last one. It is just that I fall so in love with some of the stuff that I read that I gotta share it with everyone.

My mom sent this poem to me. She and I are a lot a like with our reading, in some ways. We fall in love with a work and insist everyone enjoy it as much as we do :-). She is a retired librarian and is very well read.


A Daughter Comes Home (also by Nikki Giovanni)

When daughters leave home
they take a bit of the light
most of the sunshine
all the giggly laughter

Of course we never say:
Don't go

We say:
You need your education
That man you love
He may not treat you
Right

When daughters leave
home it's not like when
sons
do

Sons go off to seek
fame or a fortune or some sort of medal
we know they will not be back
whole:
Maybe broken by war
Maybe Positive for love
Maybe in bits and pieces
from all the vultures who pluck
at their hopes and dreams

When sons leave home
they are gone

But daughters return
To air the quilts
of winter night sweats
To clean the clellars
of old peach preserves
To make mothers buy
red dresses
To cajole fathers
who suffered strokes on the job
to go to a baseball game
To rear their childer
and bury the dog

Daughters return to retire
an acient debt
that says:
Those who haved loved and protected me
will now be loved and protected

A daughter comes home
to cook and wash and laugh so hard
to straighten out and straighten up
to tell stories to listen to tales

Heaven peeks down to applaud
and the angels
sing