Wind, Trees

In Freeman’s ruminative, mournful, and precise follow-up to The Park, he says goodbye to the known world while savoring everything within it, even as it burns. The poems urge the reader to slow down, the line-breaks skillfully moving against the grain of natural phrasing, leaning toward “a world/ where imagination and remembrance are the same thing.” Freeman is drawn to “four o’clock/ dark beginning like a rumor” and “dawn’s green/ glove,” times when the natural world’s presence pushes past the distractions of daily life, allowing memories to surface. Climate change is the heart of this collection, the white-hot whiff of environmental disaster lying just over the next hill, fueling many of Freeman’s reverent descriptions of trees: “the trees loom/ overhead—as they have since whale/ fat powered streetlamps—inhaling/ the latest storm to be weathered, piping/ out clean air, even here.” In a poem that is more explicitly political, he uses rhyme: “I’m closing the doors shutting the window/ cranking the thermostat to blue, now you won’t see/ me and I can’t see you.” Elsewhere, he observes a heron in a trash-filled brook and asks, “what are we for?/ To watch, mourn, to exclaim gladly?” These deep and timely meditations beautifully illuminate humanity’s plight. (Oct.)