Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Magic Show

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

Mariana Tupper is a resident of Yarmouth. She writes that "Magic Show" was inspired by such places as Pemaquid Beach, New Harbor, and Penobscot Bay -- though readers of her poem will recognize other seaside locations as well.

Magic Show by Mariana S. Tupper

It happens here twice a day:
         beds of seaweed levitate a dozen feet
         clamflats vanish
         rivulets of sand pour down like lava
         sparkling flecks of mica swirl like smoke.
When it happens again at night,
         white sand turns black 
         moonlight catches on starfish
         phosphorescence floats among the rocks
         wind echoes against the sky.
Eventually the whole beach disappears,
to be revealed again when darkness
is swept off like a giant scarf
by the hand of dawn.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2002 by Mariana Tupper. Reprinted from A Sense of Place, Collected Maine Poems, Bay River Press, 2002, by permission of Mariana Tupper. 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.