Breath (Symbol)
Breath takes on symbolic significance in "A Small Needful Fact" in multiple ways. The context of the poem is that Eric Garner, a Black man, died after a police officer placed him in a chokehold. His last words, "I can't breathe" (also spoken by others who died in police custody), became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement confronting racism and police brutality in the United States.
Garner's work in New York's Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department means that in all likelihood, according to the poem, the plants that Garner placed in the earth continue to make it easier for us to breathe. This symbolizes a kind of inherent ecology: a connection, mediated by the earth, between humans (and other life forms) who may not directly interact with each other. Through the biological process of breath, we are connected to Garner and thus to the nature of his death.
Poetry itself relies on breath, as breath becomes speech and makes way for necessary pauses. The poem is full of commas that ask the reader to pause and take a breath.
Plants (Symbol)
In the poem, plants symbolize both the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of everyday living. Gay portrays Garner as a regular working man who uses his "very large hands" to gently place plants into the earth (Lines 4-7). Unlike many of Gay's poems which hone in on nature, there are no specific sensory details expressed in "A Small Needful Fact." The distance that this choice creates is an essential component of the poem's meaning. Gay is not placing Garner on a pedestal nor attempting to transport the reader via metaphors about Garner's death. Instead, the plants that Garner placed in the earth reach across time to make it easier for us to breathe in the present.
There is a kind of magic inherent in the basic biological process of plants turning carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, but Gay uses the plants and their biological processes as symbols for the ways in which we are all connected, and thus implicated in Garner's death.
The Earth (Symbol)
The word "earth" in the poem refers to the substance of the land surface (soil) in which Garner planted. However, another meaning of the word "earth" is the planet on which we live; the world. The symbolic resonance of the earth in "A Small Needful Fact" is that it houses "us," the social collectivity, who must work to change an evil that has taken root in society.
