Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: September Staying

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

For Poet Ranzoni, of Bucksport, Maine is a place that emerrges in September, after the summer visitors have gone.

September Staying by Patricia Ranzoni

The air is made of missing:
spaces where you were, sounds
lacking yours. A robin basks
on the arbor appreciating as much
as I and whole bubbles of butterflies
bounce in the garden quiet but for
crikets nearby, crows flies off,
leaves high up. Certain flies buzz
somewhere. The spider still weaves
in the hops vine but hummingbirds
have gone, like summerfolk, like you,
to other worlds leaving hardy ones
to season ourselves in stillness again
to find our own peace. Our own place.

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Take Heart: A conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © Patricia Ranzoni. Reprinted from Maine in Four Seasons, Down East Books, 2010, by permission of Patricia Ranzoni. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laurate, at mainepoetlaurate@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.