Mademoiselle Moulin. Miss Windmill.  

That’s what her name meant

Though I’m not sure she 

Taught us that or 

Necessarily wanted us to know

Petite

But square with cropped red hair

A kind of Buster Brown

In peasant pants and big buttoned top

Dallas not Paris was her home

Wherever 

She was born and grew up

She came to us with a smell

Different from my mother

Who favored Yardley’s

Mademoiselle’s 

Scent was enhanced by

Her bike ride to school

And the small yard which she cut

With her push powered mower

Living alone

If that’s what she did

Seemed to agree with her

And we only incidentally

Wondered why she was a miss

Ageless

Intense and slightly irritable

It wasn’t clear she was meant

For children and only now

I wonder about her life

She drew

Large hilarious protruding lips

On the blackboard in 

A valiant effort to move our

New French words farther forward

Americans

Swallow their words keeping 

Them locked in their throats

And mumbling their meaning

She said let them out

On her chalkboard

La Tour Eiffel took shape and

And a whole new take on French poodles

Who often sported berets

Like the one she wore

Un petit effort

And months and years of exposure

To the sounds from her mouth and

From the LP’s on the turntable

Introduced us to the larger world

Of a woman

Herself a long-playing record 

Well-aged when we first met

And timeless to me today

Miss Moulin and her big lips

This might have been a lesson learned, though.
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