Going Out

for Eve

My daughter, heading out on the town in her glad rags,

laughs a laugh like a floribunda rose pinned in her hair.

She has so much beauty in her, more than this summer

evening, in all its frippery. More, even, than the sound

of her heels the length of the road, her phone voice

dipping into company, the pooled high talk of her

and her friends slipping through the city’s open door.

Do me a favour, daughter: sometime, in time, wear for me

a sweetheart neckline, slingback sandals, my good ring

and howsoever many of your necklaces and bracelets.

Walk your walk through ten thousand doorways

so the music of you is one and the same as the music

of starlings and new moons and traffic lights and weirs,

only in a new arrangement arranged by, and for, you.