Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Today’s favorite poem from past columns was chosen by Jan McCormack of Portland, who writes that Kimberly Green’s “concise evocation uses uncommon words and imagery” to create “a rich link with experiences shared by us lucky humans.”

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 a while

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.