In "What My Child Learns of the Sea," Lorde's speaker muses upon her daughter's future development and growing awareness as a person. One discovers that the speaker is the mother and that "my child" is her daughter. The poem, comprised of four stanzas, turns around the cycles of nature, but not in the typically accepted seasonal order of spring, summer, autumn (or fall), and winter. Rather, three seasons are introduced in the first stanza in this order: summer, spring, and autumn. The poem's title, reinforced by its repetition in the first line of the first stanza, introduces the key phrase "learns of the sea." The speaker's daughter will learn something about the sea and about life. She will learn about mystery, of the existence of "summer thunder" and "of riddles / that hide in the vortex of spring." Given that a riddle is something mysterious and difficult...