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  • A Nest in a Copse, and: Little Sister of the Snow
  • Molly Lou Freeman (bio)

I know I am a dust    speck, a dirt clod, a pebblein the starry shuffle—I am but silt, rainweft,a snow-    dot        in snow-melt—sunlight splintered & split by an eyeblink,a footnote in a bird zone,the echo    of a whistle            of the speed train’s seriesof elisions—sliding, riding, rolling, gliding, a sheen    in the wind, spindrift in a sunbeam.

I write of time’s accumulation, in doing time,    routine’s what    I’ve got—habit—boots worn down,for sleep’s lack, I dream in my coat, doze in my hat.

If when then    now another year’s donein—my heart ever ardent as any’s foolprone to seduction        (a petaled pattern in a woodland,a nest in a copse).        If more for loss, if wisdom in subtractiontake not nature—my prayer—from me, nor my song,        whip-poor-will in the willow    and who has seen the wind? [End Page 119]

Little Sister of the Snow

Now nightfall bird broken by songs unbiddenso absolutely sungyou hear them, wondering how    that gentle is possible,and the train whistlesdown hills, sylvan alleyswhere deer and fox and boar share    these paths,their snowy tracks softly taken back by all thisrain.

    Elsewhere snowdrops, a glade of themin a back garden. Late winter splendor,daylight’s sweet accretion—let me love youjust a little longer—

    of an evening—my winter river deeplysleek upon these flood lines    the willow sweeps & wept,so the Seine, storm ridden, ups the ante(pulling all it can down and in—then some-    times) just as unwritten—those gulls gonehome—smoked out in mist and frost.

I like to walk there with my horse, wanderingwherein the barren birch & pine there is a pond,tawny in the center of the copse—its snowyvelvet coverlet, an eyelet of rot—I love    its shadows. You choose the color—yellow, rosy, amber, pan icy flossan upside down image of    those girly trees, reflected [End Page 120] golden scratch, twigs, and needles driftinginto the pattern. Here I am.

Answers, I don’t know them.My papa says all’s in the asking—so

    doubt driven, I offer my questionsto the changeable, temporalworld, j’ai la nostalgie de mon pays—.

Little sister of the snow,    what does your soul look like? [End Page 121]

Molly Lou Freeman

Molly Lou Freeman is currently writing a novel. Recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and poetry awards from the French National Literary Endowment, she teaches and translates poetry in Paris. She has recently lectured on poetry at the nyu and Columbia University Departments of Creative Writing. She rides horses and lives in France and Mexico.

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