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Alistair Robinson

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A letter To Our Unborn Child

You don’t know us
but soon we’ll be very close...
and then distant, probably,
and then close again, I hope.

You seem surprisingly clever.
While your mam was getting
stressed about work and I was
taking the dog for a walk you were
busy forming fingers and lungs
and doing some really complicated
stuff which we wouldn’t
have a clue about.

We hope you bring your cleverness —
and your precocious dexterity — with you.
And when you get here
I'll help you with that cleverness,
if that’s OK, and I promise
to follow Government guidelines
and spend the right amount of time
doing homework with you,
and not for you.

You need food for brains —
we’ve seen the menu in the
pregnancy book. We'll read it
out to you if you like.
If there’s anything you particularly
require, just kick. The book
says you can start doing that from
next Tuesday week. But then,
you probably knew that.

(Alistair Robinson, South Shields)
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