Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Today’s reader’s choice from a past column was chosen by Nancy Winetrout of Winthrop, who writes that in this poem by Elizabeth Tibbetts, “the mundane is elevated to poetry, making me pause to consider the words, the man, and his life.”

The Saint of Returnables

By Elizabeth Tibbetts

Our saint of returnables is back, riding, slow

mile after mile, along the spring roadside,

baskets strapped to his old bike, plastic bags

hung from the handlebars. His gaze averts

to the ditch as he watches for what glitters,

each bottle and can he picks a nickel towards

sustenance. He pedals March through November,

through good and God-awful weather, claiming

what’s been tossed out or lost until his bike

is as packed as a mule. When he glances up

we see his face full-on, a face expression

has been erased from, so he looks as though

he has lost his own story somewhere down the road.

But what looks simple could be a twisting path

that would lead to a man’s heart. Not the tough

muscle pumping spring air into his thighs, but

that imagined space of the soul, where he stores

everything, and watches, and waits for what’s

to come. Yet we’re already done, having driven fast

past him—past wood frogs’ muttering talk

and blackbirds’ red-winged flashes in alders,

past swatches of witch grass and day lilies, leaves

so fierce they push up green inches every day.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Elizabeth Tibbetts. Reprinted from “Maine in Four Seasons,” Down East Books, 2010, by permission of Elizabeth Tibbetts. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc 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.