A conversation in poetry

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Over her long literary life, Elizabeth Coatsworth of Nobleboro authored 90 books, including volumes of fiction, biography, stories for children, and poetry. In today’s poem she describes a thunderstorm in Maine.

July Storm

By Elizabeth Coatsworth

Like a tall woman walking across the hayfield

the rain came slowly, dressed in crystal and the sun.

Rustling along the ground, she stopped at our apple tree

only for a whispering minute, then swept darkening

skirts over the lake,

and so serenely climbed the wooden hills.

Was the rainbow a ribbon that she wore?

We saw it when she was gone. It seemed a part of her brightness

and the way she moved lightly, but with assurance

over the earth.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 1963 Elizabeth Coatsworth. Reprinted from Down East Magazine, July 1963, by permission of Estate of Catherine Beston Barnes.

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