Repeated Patterns

“Seeing You” is about repeated patterns in relationships. In particular, Valentine wants to suggest that what is learned from one's first teachers, one's parents, is something one will learn again with a lover. Often in her poetry, Valentine seems to evaluate her romantic loves according to the standard of maternal love. Correspondingly, she finds similarities between the way she feels about a lover and the way she feels about her mother. Will one find subsequent gardens to be the same as the “original garden,” or will there be different landscaping? Will other gardens be as akin to Eden as was the garden of her mother? Will the feeling of coming out of her mother's mudbank be the same as emerging from the lake of her lover? Valentine's narrator is seeking reassurance that her man's love will be as caring as her mother's love at the same time...