Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Listening for Loons

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

This week’s poem from a past column was chosen by Margaret S. Davenport, who writes: “In Rangeley, we love our loons, listening, picturing, and anxiously counting them.” The poem reminds her, she adds, that like the loons, “we also dive under, to catch that silver fish of an elusive dream.”

Listening for Loons by Gary Lawless

i
wild roses down
to the water
one loon alone
northeast of the island
cedarscent

ii
water lily or 
loon white
on the water both
bright
flowers flowers
on the surface of
this world

iii
like loons we dive under
dive under and
come up somewhere else

iv
every night now
i listen for loons
to hear their voices
to leave this body
to return to stars

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © Gary Lawless. Reprinted from Listening for Loons, by permission of Gary Lawless. 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.