Serpent's Tooth

The title of this poem comes from Shakespeare's King Lear "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child" (or something like that).  It's a bit too "rhymy" for my taste, but I was playing with different approaches at the time and for a lot of people, it isn't a poem unless it rhymes, so what can I say?...

Serpent's Tooth

Chained to thankless domesticity
     She does her daily tasks
Blamed for her complicity
     Though she was never asked
Her hands in soapy water
      In reverie she dreams
Of better for her daughter
      Impossible it seems

But as years pass, she slowly wins
     and as her daughter grows
she knows an untamed freedom
     that her mother never knows

Until the young professional
     ambition-filled and smart,
a fearless ladder-climber
     groomed to play a bigger part
She looks down on her mother
     and her drudge-filled narrow life
and turns her back, unmindful
     of her mother's sacrifice.