Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

We begin December with an inspiriting poem by Gorham’s Rachel Flynn, who reveals her feeling for her child through the metaphor of a coydog.

 

Coydog

 

By Rachel Contreni Flynn

 

When I look at you,

my life, my eyes

grow lighter, become

a golden coydog’s.

 

I cannot touch you

enough and already

have learned not to try

to trap or tame you,

 

not even to untangle

your hair. It is enough

that the look of you

lightens me

 

until I could run

the fields behind our house,

twisting and yipping

with joy.

 

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Rachel Contreni Flynn. Reprinted from “Tongue,” Red Hen Press, 2010, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, special consultant to the Maine poet laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 207-228-8263. “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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