Asleep, she has no idea she is old.

She’s running uphill, no lightfoot, but quite fast
past the houses and driveways of family friends
toward the higher fields just breaking into flower
that weren’t there before, when she was awake.
She stops at the tree edge. The sight that yields
is daisies. Careful she enters the pathless field
of daisies daisies hundreds sunning. She takes
her time. She crouches among their stems. Bowered
low, she looks up at their heads, their far sky.
The wind’s soft. The sunclock’s high. It can’t last.
Aunt Grace is coming to lunch, she’s been told.
Good. Maybe she brings a love-me-not daisy or
Love-me. Aunt Grace will know what daisies are for.

Published in the August 14, 2015 issue: View Contents

Marie Ponsot recently received the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, given annually by Sewanee Review. In 2013, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Foundation. Her Collected Poems was published in August by Knopf.

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