For My New Grandson

By Naomi Shihab Nye

 

I want polar bears to welcome you to the far north,

 

their lumbering grace dazzling against ice. Your open gaze.

 

May there yet be ice. May ancient trees lean over you in wild

 

places, brush your brow.   We remember so many details

 

now disappeared…tiny toads in deserts,

 

fireflies. Where is the language of window screens,

 

whisper of real air against a sleeping cheek?

 

If we lose the ability to poke a hole in soil, watch an onion grow,

 

what do we know? What will take its place?

 

Today the sun we all love lights your 5-day-old face

 

and you blink, just beginning to focus. We dream you will have

 

so much to admire.

 

Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother.Nye has won many awards and fellowships, among them four Pushcart Prizes, the Jane Addams Children’s Book award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and many notable book and best book citations from the American Library Association,and a 2,000 Witter Bynner Fellowship In 1997, Trinity University, her alma mater, honored her with the Distinguished Alumna Award.In June 2009, Nye was named as one of PeaceByPeace.com’s first peace heroes.^[4] In 2013, Nye won the Robert Creeley Award. She was named laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature.