Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: A Prayer, A Welcome

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.

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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 207-228-8263. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.