Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Appointment

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

This week Candice Stover of Mount Desert Island writes in praise of a favorite Maine pond.

Appointment by Candice Stover

Not that it knows my name
or that I call it
any name at all—

pond, refuge, sanity, little jewel…

Not that it knows I approach it
summer mornings
like a lover

I undress for without hesitating—
sandals on the bank,
towel draping the branches,

welcoming even the sharp stones
it passes over
like certain betrayals…

how I lie on my side and let
the cool of its skin
brush my cheek, float

my body, this surface
where the loon also learns
how to cry for its species

and where stems of bladderwort rise
above the ugliness
of our name for it:

those delicate carnivores
I am not afraid to swim near
with their beautiful open mouths.

---

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2007 Candice Stover. Reprinted from Poems from the Pond, Deerbrook Editions, 2007, by permission of Candice Stover. Closed to submissions; comments may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.