figure without landscape

Figure without landscape,
white with the many names of snow,
she makes her house
of skin and snow.
Alone
for the others are dead,
she is a small Arctic sun
curving space around her.
This world swirls,
changes with every wind.
She must shape the world
by being alive.

At times the wind is elsewhere,
no snow falls,
the sky's lights crackle and hiss.
Lost as the sun
among all stars,
she hears the whole night
name her,
Small Small
Here-by-chance
Belonging-nowhere-meaning-nothing.
She says stubbornly nothing
but poems come from her hands:
she finds food.

from "Woman On/Against Snow" by Pat Lowther