Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Sentences and Where He Went

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

The brief poems of today?s column were written by Edward Nobles of Bangor about his father, who abandoned Nobles? family. The absence his father left behind was ?silent and ominous,? Nobles says, adding: ?These two poems are aftershocks.?

Sentences

The sledgehammer cracks
like my father?s heavy shouts
until the stone starts to break.
The sound then is different.
Only a thumb?s touch is needed.

The division is final.

Where He Went

My father gave up
wife children friends
dog car house every
worldly possession
traveling
far into a strange
space bottles
rotating shuffling clinking
searching vaguely for a genie
poof!

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Sentences copyright © 2000 by Edward Nobles. Reprinted from The Bluestone Walk, Persea Books, 2000, by permission of Edward Nobles. Where He Went copyright ? 2010 by Edward Nobles. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at 207-228-8263 or poetlaureate@mainewriters.org.