The Ways Of Daughters Poem by Ruth Stone

My daughters are getting on.
They're in over their hips,
over their stretch marks.
Their debts are rising
and their faces are serious.

There are no great barns
or riding horses.
Only one of them has a washing machine.
Their old cars break
and are never fixed.

So what is this substance
that floods over them,
into which they wade
as if going out
to meet the Phoenicians?

And they have no nets
for those shifty looking sailors.
But when I look again,
my daughters are alone in their kitchens.
Each child sweats in its junior bed.

And my girls are painting their fingernails.
They are rubbing lotions
on their impatient hands. This year
they are staining their hands and feet with henna.
They lie in the sun with henna packs on their hair.