Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Codydog

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

We begin December with an inspiriting poem by Gorham’s Rachel Flynn, who reveals her feeling for her child through the metaphor of a coydog.

Coydog by Rachel Contreni Flynn

When I look at you,
my life, my eyes
grow lighter, become
a golden coydog’s.

I cannot touch you
enough and already
have learned not to try
to trap or tame you,

not even to untangle
your hair. It is enough
that the look of you
lightens me

until I could run
the fields behind our house,
twisting and yipping
with joy.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Rachel Contreni Flynn. Reprinted from Tongue, Red Hen Press, 2010, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn. 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.