"...I became the daughter of your dream"

My dear, what you said was one thing
but what you sang was another, sweetly
subversive and dark as blackberries
and I became the daughter of your dream.

This body is your body, ashes now
and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts,
my throat, my thighs. You run in me
a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood,

you sing in my mind like wine. What you
did not dare in your life you dare in mine.


From "My mother's body" by Marge Piercy


Mother and Child Kneeling (Madonna), Wilhelm Lehmbruck, 1910