Waiting For Lindsey Poem by Frank Bana

A crib, a growing plant, a madonna’s rocking chair,
Moving images of shooting stars and moons:
What must be prepared for her arrival?
What should properly adorn the world she finds?

While she’s kicking in her evolution
In training to abandon the lake-like womb -
Summoned to be the embodiment of dreams –
The demand persists: how must we prepare?

Nothing of her future can be previsaged,
Nor her choices, nor her freedoms of choice:
The numbers swell in lines that bind the continents -
Some insisting on justice, some applying for bread.

A brightly multi-coloured mobile
A trunk of infant clothes, gifted and store-found
Await as first inheritance, closeted
In a slightly sunlit, meditative room.

Families of ducks gather outside the window.
So large our hopes of her, and
She so young and small -
Our questions burn the tongues of a hundred million more.