* * *
Sonnet Manumitted
Little carmen, twig-cage-incarcerated,
Is your tone vehement or verecund?
For what eternity have you fretted
And flitted between ends of your bond?
Do you feel wrath or terror at this creature
Near, eclipsing your narrow slatted light?
You dash back and forth the diameter
Of your cell with accelerated might.
This confining contraption’s one outlet
Must be this unostentatious wood-bar.
This creature fumbles and jiggles it a bit
And rejoices to ope an oblong door.
You wing on your wonted course. Don’t you see
Vast free space to sing?
_________________Oh!
_________________________Swift flees
_______your glee.
* * *
Sinumere Gull-Watching
Stroked silken surface
Glides over itself to swoosh
Against white smooth swerve
* * *
Lucie Chou is an Anglophone ecopoet, naturalist and convivialist resident in China. She is a college freshman at Xian Jiaotong University and is constantly aspiring to give intelligible voices to differently articulate living beings in her poetry. Some of her human influences include Marianne Moore, Amy Clampitt, Peter Larkin, and Michael Marder, while nonhuman ones would encompass, among others, a sweet gean tree that grew as her nursery, and the pigeons, finches and sparrows that also call the tree their home.
featured photo (cropped) by Наталья Маркина from Pexels