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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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.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
The Sugar-Plum Tree Eugene Field
from New English Canaan [The Songe] Thomas Morton
November Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
Vortex John Hoffman
Hamlet, Act I, Scene I [Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes] William Shakespeare
Scene/Recipe David Curry
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France Alan Seeger
Death of an Old Seaman Langston Hughes
Short-Order Cook Jim Daniels
How careful was I, when I took my way (Sonnet 48) William Shakespeare

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