“Roundstone Cove” by Marie Ponsot:
The wind rises. The sea snarls in the fog
far from the attentive beaches of childhood—
no picnic, no striped chairs, no sand, no sun.Here even by day cliffs obstruct the sun;
moonlight miles out mocks this abyss of fog.
I walk big-bellied, lost in motherhood,hunched in a shell of coat, a blindered hood.
Alone a long time, I remember sun—
poor magic effort to undo the fog.Fog hoods me. But the hood of fog is sun.
Tonight at the headquarters of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, Marie Ponsot will accept the 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, about as good as it gets for an American poet. For a tour through Ponsot’s remarkable career, check out the Poetry Foundation’s site here and the Poetry Society of America’s site here (the latter by our much-loved poetry editor, Alice Quinn).
(From The Bird Catcher © 1998 by Marie Ponsot. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Photo by Flickr user weegeebored)
The Dish 