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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: Another Full Moon
Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
Betty Twitchell of Turner, who selected today?s favorite poem from a past column, writes this about her choice: ?From the imagined lamp light in the next room to the almost reluctant acceptance found in her last lines, Kate Barnes has not only captured my own experience with the deepest of Maine winters, but may also have illuminated the reasons I have little desire to live elsewhere.?
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 Kate Barnes. Reprinted from Where the Deer Were, David R. Godine, 1994, by permission of the Estate of Catherine B. Barnes. Please note that the column is no longer accepting submissions; comments about it may be directed to special consultant to the poet laureate, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 207-228-8263. Take Heart: More Poems from Maine, a brand new anthology collecting the final two and a half years of this column, will be available in early January from Down East Books.