- A Nest in a Copse, and: Little Sister of the Snow
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 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.