on the cold apple-bough
a white star, then another
exploding out of the bark
The opening image of “Amends” is strangely ambiguous. The poem begins at night, but it isn’t entirely clear why the apple bough is “cold.” Perhaps Rich refers only to the temperature, but the word might also suggest that all is not necessarily well in this nighttime scene. Something similar happens with the stars. Rich seems to be describing a straightforward image of stars peeping through the branches of an apple tree, but the verb “exploding” suggests that this image is more violent than we expect it to be. She also leaves it ambiguous whether these are really stars, or a metaphor for the white flowers of the apple-bough, which would be more likely to explode “out of the bark.”
as it rises with the surf
laying its cheek for moments on the sand
as it licks the broken ledge
Here, Rich personifies the moon as a caring and compassionate being. The verb “licks” and the phrase “laying its cheek” both call up images of comforting actions a human being might take. Through these humanizing words, Rich personifies the moon as a being with feelings and desires, rather than a mere inanimate object. In this quotation, the actions the moon takes are somewhat eroticized. The word “licks,” especially, seems sexual, and in Rich’s poetry it’s not a stretch to imagine that the action here is specifically a homoerotic one. This eroticism furthers the idea that the moon in this poem cares about the world; the moon and the seashore act almost like lovers.
as it unavailing pours into the gash
of the sand-and-gravel quarry
The word “unavailing” means “achieving little or nothing, ineffective.” It’s an unexpected way to describe the moonlight, which in poetry is more often cast as beautiful or sublime. In “Amends,” although the moonlight offers comfort, it can’t really do anything to heal the world. For Rich, a “sand-and-gravel” mine looks like a wound in the mountainside. Although the moonlight fills this wound, it cannot heal it.
as it soaks through cracks into the trailers
tremulous with sleep
as it dwells upon the eyelids of the sleepers
The final setting of “Amends” is a trailer park. “The sleepers” probably work for the gravel mine and the industrial farm which Rich describes in the previous stanza. Rich describes these people not as workers but “sleepers,” a move which subtly refuses to reduce them merely to the work they do. The importance of their sleep is amplified by the line “into the trailers/tremulous with sleep,” in which Rich suggests that their sleep moves outwards to the trailers, which also become tired. The word “tremulous” means shaking or quivering slightly. It’s a delicate image that renders the sleepers more vulnerable than their work often allows them to be.
