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.