I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow—
There you'll be
The speaker here describes how she is able to inject her partner into any romantic narrative. The speaker describes her partner as "sure as shooting arrows to the heart," involving the image of raining arrows in the poem while keeping that image a step removed from the narrative, in the same way that this scene is removed from reality.
This stanza is written in a more roundabout manner than the rest of the poem, which is fairly straightforward. This sentence is convoluted, and by the time we come back to the hero mentioned in the first line of the quote, the speaker has described the scene. By placing the phrase "There you'll be" at the end of this quote and separated from what comes before it in the sentence, the speaker heightens the drama of the scene.
This post-postmodern age is all business: compact disks
And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks
Event.
This part of the poem feels slightly dejected; the speaker finds reality disappointing. These lines are more disjointed and jerky than the ones in the first stanza.
Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast,
Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host
Of daydreams:
These lines show the speaker's natural poetic inclinations; she imagines the hurricane as a man, and that plunges her into her memories. The tone here is a little playful with "Oddly male" and "Big Bad Floyd" poking fun at the way we treat hurricanes as singular entities comparable to people.
They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey;
Were thin as licorice and as chewy,
Sweet with a dark and hollow center.
These lines show how far in the past these relationships are to the speaker; she does not distinguish between these boys, and she does not clarify whether these names refer to specific boys or to a type of boy. These lines use a lot of "s" and "w" sounds. Those soft and sibilant sounds reflect the soft insubstantiality of these boys.
You're bunkered in your
Aerie, I'm perched in mine
(Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
The speaker is not looking at her partner but is still able to describe what he is doing and his surroundings. This, as well as the mention that both offices use the same furniture, shows the familiarity the speaker and her partner have developed with one another.
We're content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it's embarrassing, this happiness—
Who's satisfied simply with what's good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?
The mention of "the Divine" in this poem is interesting because the speaker does not describe exactly what she means by that. The scene with the hero and the damsel, though it is fantastical, does not seem divine. The speaker has lofty ideas of what a relationship could potentially look like, but she accepts that that ideal may not be achievable and that her relationship can be satisfying without transcending the realm of the everyday.
The questions she asks here seem to have risen from the doubts that sometimes bother her. Happiness can be difficult to accept in a culture that values hard endless work and treats contentment like stagnation.
And yet, because nothing else will do
To keep me from melancholy (call it blues),
I fill this stolen time with you.
In the last lines, the speaker explains that she loves the easy, mundane contentment of her relationship, but she still enjoys imagining herself and her partner in fantastical and exciting situations. Her relationship is ordinary, but her happiness in it allows her to use it to access her imagination; though the relationship seems boring on the surface, it has depth and significance.
