Daughter, Have I Told You?

Met an author, Rachel Coyne.  Both our sons were playing in the same basketball practices.  I checked out her books and was taken with her poem, Daughter, Have I Told You?

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose words are wildflowers.
Whose stomachs are soft hills 
and whose shoulders are the river's marshy end.

You are of women with feet as heavy as the gray stones of the riverbed,
and hair as thick and tangled as the prairie.

Our arms are the tree trunks
and our faces are the horizon
where wheat will coax the sun to sleep.

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose hands are the harvest.
Whose hearts are the deep, deep lakes
and whose voices are the silver birch of the woodland.

You are of women with tongues long like the river winding out tales as old as the Mississippi.

Our lives are the solid earth beneath you feet
and our embrace. like the paths of the buffalo, circles the heart's land.

Daughter, have I told you?

These women, like your momma and grandmama, 
will stretch up from the earth, dark and strong like trees.

And you, little one,
will sit in our branches
and feel cool wind blow.