Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: About Bees is What I Say Aloud When You Ask What I'm Thinking

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

Today?s favorite poem from past columns was chosen by Jan McCormack of Portland, who writes that Kimberly Green?s ?concise evocation uses uncommon words and imagery? to create ?a rich link with experiences shared by us lucky humans.?

About Bees is What I Say Aloud When You Ask What I?m Thinking by Kimberly Cloutier Green

Watching bees plunge into sunlit blossoms 
and stagger back besotted 
   by the apple nectar on their tongues,
I feel their hunger as mine?

the longing to linger a while 
as though winged, 
   looped in this daze of pink light, confusing 
morning for a flower, 
   all my drowsy preparations 
of our toast and tea 
   a slow, zigzagging industry,

then sharing my stores 
of gathered sweetness with you 
   in a rapture of emptying,
each turn I make in my dance
   timed for the signal flashes of gold 
dust on my feet on my hands on your face.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2013 Kimberly Cloutier Green. Reprinted from The Next Hunger, Bauhan Publishing, 2013, by permission of Kimberly Cloutier Green. Questions about Take Heart, which is no longer accepting submissions, 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.