My Daughter’s Dream at Twenty-one

Your letter told me
of the dreamy sea:
your landward stroking, not a child’s,
how the ocean waters took your clothes
so you could not make
the saving shore
unless you gained it
bare and alone.
 
         Which of us would choose
         to rise from the swells
         without cloaking 
         our precious private selves?
         All grown,
         tutored so badly, 
         even we cannot welcome this choice:
         the sea’s endless fishy rocking
         or
         the blackboard of our own skin, 
         each chalky blemish
         a bald false sum.
 
A fisherman,
stiffened in his heavy rain skirt,
would
without shielding his wind-bitten brow
warn:
return to water.
Shoals would be better. 
 
Your letter said
then I was there behind you,
mother of all swimmers,
one hand holding 
above the spray
your towel, dry,
which I threw to you, my only child.
 
         My darling girl,
         in my dream
         it is my arms which lift you
         above the surf,
         my muscled will which lays us naked
         on the blank wet sand,
         my fierce throat cursing the fisherman
         with blindness
         should he not turn away.
 
In your dream,
I threw the towel.
Take this, I whispered.
We watched as
the towel reached
your up-flung hand,
but not before,
like a heron’s wing unfolding, 
it dipped and tipped itself 
halfway into the inky
pot of ocean.
 
         Know this, child of my dead sea:
         know that when I cannot
         take you into my skin
         to warm you with my last blood,
         I will see you naked always,
         and marvel at your imperfection
         and trust your every black regret
         and love even the lank seaweed
         scarfing your white shoulders
         and lullaby to you:
         rise, Daughter, rise.