Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Spring Thaw, Loon Return and Growing Lettuce

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

Today?s column features three poems about arrivals that celebrate spring in Maine.

Spring Thaw by Ruth F. Guillard

Night, early April
White rivers of rain, snowmelt
Roar over the rocks
Scouring the steep slopes
Tripping over grey boulders
Hillsides echoing

Every spring I wait
For this sweet sound of release
The earth rejoicing.

Loon Return, by Carol Bachofner

Long ribbons of loons
descend through a cleft
in the spreading morning;
resplendent in formal attire,
they dip into icy meltwater ponds.
Beautiful, eerie laughter heralds
oncoming spring, breaks the boreal
winter silence with its return.

Growing Lettuce, by Henry Braun

I have broken soil
and run a line in the blackness with my finger
and dropped the flea-like seeds in
too thickly.

Even so, even so,
the lettuce comes, standing room only,
as a favor to a first try
and is a shy green.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyrights © 2012 by Ruth F Guillard, reprinted from From Burnham Cove, by permission of Ruth F Guillard; 2011 by Carol Bachofner, reprinted from I Write in the Greenhouse, Custom Museum Publishing, by permissions of Carol Bachofner; 2006 by Henry Braun, reprinted from Loyalty, Off the Grid Press, by permission of Henry Braun. 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.