My Daughter at Seventeen

I hold the scissors in my shaking hands.  I don’t
want to, but I cut her from you, detaching the pearl
from its tongue-pink bed.  The throbbing cord
is lumpish and gray—the pulp of raw calamari,
the matter of ocean.  Together,

we bring granddaughter into the light.
She rests, squinting and wet, on the cushion
of your chest.  And you look so happy,
knowing that the separation of her
body, wracked from your body,

is only a beginning.  For this thing
you had created, this parcel of cells
and bones, blood and nerves—I saw
your eyes filling with a new kind of love.
You are better at this than I ever imagined.



Note: This poem also appears in Snakeskin Poetry Webzine:
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/162daughter.html