Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Feasting

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

Veteran author Elizabeth Garber is a former poet laureate of Belfast, who writes nonfiction as well as poetry. In this poem for Valentine’s week, she celebrates one of life’s great feasts.

Feasting by Elizabeth W. Garber

I am so amazed to find myself kissing you
with such abandon,
filling myself with our kisses
astounding hunger for edges of lips and tongue.
Returning to feast again and again,
our bellies never overfilling from this banquet.
Returning in surprise,
in remembering,
in rediscovering,
such play of flavors of gliding lips
and forests of pressures and spaces.
The spaces between the branches 
as delicious as finding the grove of lilies of the valley
blossoming just outside my door under the ancient oak.
“I’ve never held anyone this long,” you said,
the second time you entered my kitchen.
I am the feast this kitchen was blessed to prepare
waiting for you to enter open mouthed in awe
in the mystery we’ve been given, 
our holy feast.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth W. Garber. Reprinted from Pierced by the Seasons, The Illuminated Sea Press, 2004, by permission of Elizabeth W. Garber. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.