To My Grandchild (From Afar) Poem by Robert Melliard

You're here at last (or rather there) .

You didn't seem too happy on arrival:
I've seen photos of you howling.

By entering this world you overcame
your first big obstacle
on what will be a life-long course.

You'll have to learn so much -
to eat, sit, crawl, walk, talk...
Then your formal education will begin
with its endless-seeming complication
of what could be a simpler life.

In Spain, where you happen to have landed,
you'll have to study almost everything there is,
mostly by rote like a huge parrot,
repeating your teachers' words like mantras.

And this world, though unpredictable,
may well get worse in your time:
overcrowded countries may get denser,
forests smaller, air and sea dirtier,
food less natural, wars more frequent,
weather more extreme, the list goes on...

Despite such gloom you'll have some fun.
There'll be games and sports and holidays,
then songs and dances and romance.
Someone will probably break your heart
or you'll break theirs...

All that of course if you survive
the mass of prowling illnesses
and accidents which lie in wait.

I just pray that you'll be healthy.
The rest will be the usual mixture anyway
of ups and downs and twists and turns
in which you'll need to learn
to gradually forget the bad times
and cling on hard to the good.

Till one day you'll look back, I hope,
and say that life was worth living,
despite its jumbled light and dark...