Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Here’s a poem for June by Kimberly Cloutier Green of Kittery. Inspired by bees that are “besotted” by apple nectar, the poem describes a lover’s intoxication.

About Bees Is What I Say Aloud

When You Ask What I’m Thinking

By Kimberly Cloutier Green

Watching bees plunge into sunlit blossoms

and stagger back besotted

by the apple nectar on their tongues,

I feel their hunger as mine—

the longing to linger awhile

as though winged,

looped in this daze of pink light, confusing

morning for a flower,

all my drowsy preparations

of our toast and tea

a slow, zigzagging industry,

then sharing my stores

of gathered sweetness with you

in a rapture of emptying,

each turn I make in my dance

timed for the signal flashes of gold

dust on my feet on my hands on your face.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2013 Kimberly Cloutier Green. Reprinted from “The Next Hunger,” Bauhan Publishing, 2013, by permission of Kimberly Cloutier Green. 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 is proudly sponsored by …