A Walk with my Almost-Four-Year-Old Grandson

by Brooke Herter James


He gathers questions as we stroll
down the pebbled beach,
why the ocean is deep
and where the moon sleeps,
why clams need water,
why hot dogs are called hot dogs,
where the fire goes when it goes out
and Why is this periwinkle orange?

He doesn’t seem to mind my I’m not sure
as he plops treasure after treasure
into his red plastic pail.
Later, as he arranges them
on a blue-striped beach towel,
a seaside display he calls his museum,
he waives the mussel shell entrance fee,
promising he will teach me about everything for free.


* * * * *

Brooke Herter James is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Widest  Eye (2016) and Spring took the Long Way Around (2019), one prose poetry/photography collection, Postcards from Montana (2020) and one children’s book, Why Did the Farmer Cross the Road? (2017). Her poems have appeared in Mountain Troubadour Poetry Journal, Tulip Tree Review, Orbis and Rattle, as well as the online publications Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, Flapper Press, Typishly and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She lives on small farm in Vermont.