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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 loverI 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, floatmy body, this surface where the loon also learns how to cry for its speciesand 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.