Poetry Break: April in Maine

Spring Ice on Pond (M.A. Reilly, Ringwood, NJ, 2009)

A friend, Nelson Campbell, posted the poem below as a reply to a poem I posted yesterday. It is so grand, so perceptive that I wanted to share it more widely.  Years ago, the first time Rob and I went to Maine it was early April. We left Manhattan and it was 50 degrees and ten hours later we finally stopped in Freeport, Maine because the snow kept falling. At first we thought it was nothing more than a snow shower, but as we travelled north, we realized we were in a bonfide snow storm. We ended up staying at an inn that had just been open. We would return to that inn annually for the next 27 years.

Thanks Nelson and of course, thank you May Sarton.

April in Maine 

         by May Sarton 


The days are cold and brown,
Brown fields, no sign of green,
Brown twigs, not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in
The tree frogs begin
Their shrill sweet singing,
And we lie on our beds
Through the ecstatic night,
Wide awake, cracked open.

There will be no going back.



April in Maine" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems: 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.