Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Tom Sexton is a poet of place who has written fine poems about locations in Alaska, Massachusetts and Down East Maine. Here, he turns his attention to Maine’s blueberry barrens.

Crossing the Blueberry Barrens

By Tom Sexton

No one else was on the road when

We drove across the blueberry barrens

Glowing like wind-blown embers.

We gleaned berries from the edges

Of fields raked by migrant workers

Who had moved on into Nova Scotia.

Glaciers had scraped the land to the bone.

Dusk came on. Ground fog moved in.

Boulders rose like the prows of ships,

Their long oars muffled and steady,

Then the narrow road began to descend

To a small river town’s empty main street

That was as dark and as wet as a seal.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2004 Tom Sexton. Reprinted from The Hudson Review, 2004, by permission of Tom Sexton. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 228-8263. “Take Heart: Poems from Maine,” an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.

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