Take Heart: A weekly Poetry Initiative
Stealing Lilacs
April 24th, 2013
Alice Persons is a poet from Westbrook and a founding editor of Moon Pie Press, which has just released its 71st volume of poetry. In her poem for this week, "Stealing Lilacs," she suggests that some thefts can be forgiven.
Stealing Lilacs by Alice Persons
A guaranteed miracle, it happens for two weeks each May, this bounty of riches where McMansion, trailer, the humblest driveway burst with color--pale lavender, purple, darker plum-- and glorious scent. This morning a battered station wagon drew up on my street and a very fat woman got out and starting tearing branches from my neighbor's tall old lilac-- grabbing, snapping stems, heaving armloads of purple sprays into her beater. A tangle of kids' arms and legs writhed in the car. I almost opened the screen door to say something, but couldn't begrudge her theft, or the impulse to steal such beauty. Just this once, there is enough for everyone.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2004 Alice Persons. Reprinted from Never Say Never, Moon Pie Press, by permission of Alice Persons. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at
In collaboration with the Maine State Library, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and the state’s new Poet Laureate, Wesley McNair, we are proud to offer Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry.
Each week McNair will offer one previously published poem by a Maine poet. McNair will select each poem and write a brief introduction about the poet’s background and connection to Maine, and the history, context, or themes of the poem.