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Poem-a-day

Rain All Night, Paris

On the road home the tide is rising.

Riding the road-tide is dangerous 
but it’s not safe to stand still. 
Hang on the verge & you drown.

I’m going along for the tide. 
I may see more riders further on. 
Drowning must wait till I get there

and who knows who might be waiting 
with a flashlight, a thermos, 
even a raft or canoe. 

“Rain All Night, Paris” from SPRINGING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Marie Ponsot, copyright © 2002 by Marie Ponsot. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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Marie Ponsot

Marie Ponsot
Photo credit: Brian Palmer
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Khaled Mattawa is the Guest Editor of December. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mattawa about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
[I Failed Him and He Failed Me] Katie Ford 10/19/2011
My Pentagon Heather Christle 10/18/2011
Bright Felon DVD Extra/Alternate Ending Kazim Ali 10/17/2011
The impact of a dollar upon the heart Stephen Crane 10/15/2011
After tagging the dust your body is made of Jen Tynes 10/14/2011
At the Equinox Arthur Sze 10/13/2011
Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, Great-Niece of Lord Mansfield, and Her Cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, c. 1779 (by unknown artist) Honorée Fanonne Jeffers 10/12/2011
The Novel as Manuscript Norman Dubie 10/11/2011
Passage to India Walt Whitman 10/10/2011
Cousin Nancy T. S. Eliot 10/08/2011

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