Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

 

Today’s short lyric by the late Maine poet David Walker greets the arrival of a newborn with both praise and wisdom.

 

A Prayer, A Welcome 

By David Walker

Little wrinkle

from my flesh, eyelid

 

curling down at my fool’s

prattle; child

 

before whom I’m the more

child—your future

 

older than my past…

Forgive the father

 

I’ll be, become all

I can never know;

 

teach me to hold

you for a while, and then

 

to let go.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2003 Wesley McNair. Reprinted from the Maine Poets, Down East Books, 2003, by permission of Wesley McNair. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 228-8263. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.