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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Another Full Moon
Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
One of the late Kate Barnes?s most memorable poems derives from the common Maine experience of lying awake on a night lit by the moon and its reflection on snow.
Another Full Moon by Kate Barnes
The house, lit by moonlight on the snow, glows inside like a huge jewel, a moonstone or opal. The whole house shimmers with its freight of living souls, and the souls of disembodied memory. I lie inside my warm bed in the cold brightness, dreaming of those who can no longer dream of anyone, who have become motes of dust in the air, those universal dreamers. You would imagine, looking into the next room, that a lamp was lit, but I know it is only the light of the moon westering, nearly full, over the snow. I am not wanting or asking anything impossible; it?s just that I can?t help thinking about it.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 1994. Reprinted from Where the Deer Were, David R. Godine, 1994, by permission of David R. Godine. 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.