Friday 10 July 2020


Prayer To Our Unborn Grandchild
April 2020

by Brooke Herter James


Give us time
tiny one
while you lie
in your warm nest

eyes accustomed to
silky darkness  ears
to heartbeat nocturne
room just enough to wave

Wait right there
while we prepare
our home for you 
we have much to do 

this was a hard winter
late April and still snow falls
Give us the spring
and the summer too

to kneel in the dirt
set down grains and kernels
then fill empty vases
with sweet peas and phlox

eat warm cherry tomatoes
ears of silver queen corn
Give us early fall to harvest
fingerling potatoes

turn honeycrisp apples into pie
pick the last of the raspberries
gather pumpkins from the field
watch geese flock together again

Grant us the time to remember
the gifts of this world
that is soon to be yours.
Then hurry up and come.


* * * * *

Brooke Herter James is a children’s book author and poet living in Vermont. She has published two chapbooks, The Widest Eye (2016) and Spring Took the Long Way Around (2019). Her work has appeared in Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, and PoemTown Vermont. Brooke was a finalist in the Poetry Society of Vermont’s 2019 National Poetry Contest.


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