Repy to Sonnet 14
by Mary Freeman
In principio I have been a nun,
Though I have given birth to nine in all;
And Julia, Sister too—we heard the call
Alike, and felt our other selves undone
In presence of Homer, Yeats, Rilke, and Donne;
Found stained glass windows inside our cell wall
Time travel machines to Avon and Gaul;
In Ovid’s own prelapsarian sun,
Followed the road to the edge of the West.
The photos we took, all a bit grainy—
Especially that one, that still life of God.
We captured that image, we thought, the best
Inside our children’s smiles; else in brainy,
Zany poetry; or else in the sod.
Copyright © 2011 by Mary Freeman.
This poem is a reply to Sonnet 14 in the sequence “Replies to Petrarch’s Sonnet 107” by Julia Budenz.
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