I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

I didn't get to the ocean this summer, but sometimes I can take a deep breath and travel there in my imagination.

I can hear the sound of the waves. I can see the pelicans flying in formation overhead, then diving for fish. I can smell the salt air.

I can feel the wet sand beneath my feet as I walk the beach, collecting shells that catch my eye.

I love the ocean for how small it makes me feel. I don't mean small in a

negative way, a way that suggests insignificance. No, standing on the beach, looking out at the

expanse of blue that extends farther than I can see, I feel small

in the best way.

I'm reminded that I'm part of a whole, and that this landscape existed before me and

will exist after me.

I feel grateful to be alive to witness it.

Sometimes I wonder,

am I especially in love with the ocean

because I live in the middle of Ohio?

If I lived on a coast,

would I be as mesmerized?

I think and hope I would be.

I think my job, as a poet, and as a human being,

is to always lean toward wonder.

Today's poem offers us images we often find in poetry, the ocean, the moon,

dreams, a mother, a wound. But it offers us these elements in such a profoundly original and moving

way. I couldn't read this poem just once.

...