Don Miguel and The Man, “Two Trees”
Don Miguel is himself really no more sharply defined in the first stanza of this poem then the character identified only as The Man in in the second. Neither are intended to be specific individuals, but rather act as archetypes in what proves to be a very symbolic—even allegorical—narrative. The real trickster here is the third character not identified at all: the speaker. For it is he who complicates the clearly allegorical structure of the narrative with his final assertion that “trees are all this poem is about.”
Jamie, “The Thread”
Jamie is the poet’s actual son. And this is poem turns into concrete metaphor the slender thread by which the newborn almost died on the day he was born. It was only by the merest shimmery sliver of a thread that the baby clung to life long enough for doctors to perform the miracle which saved him and that thread grows into the tie that binds father and son together forever. Note: Jamie is the main character in a number of the author’s later poems.
The Poet
One would think that in a poem titled “The Rat” that the titular rodent would be the main character or, at the very least, the most interesting. In fact, the rat is barely a character at all other than being the subject of a poem that it generally agreed to be the best ever written about a rat. It is the poet himself that is the most interesting character even though he is nearly as disconnected from the actual subject of the verse as the rat. And therein almost certainly lies a worthy topic of analysis.
The Unicorn, “Unicorn”
Take note that the title of this poem does not include limitation of an article: it is simply “Unicorn” and neither “the unicorn” nor “a unicorn.” In the world of poetry, this one little lapse can become a mountain of meaning. Leave a “the” or “a” out of a novel and nobody much even notices, but leave it out of the title of a poem and you had better believe that people take notice. That said, this is not a poem about either a specific unicorn or one of many; it is about the idea of the existence of unicorns. It is about the concept of them and the will to imagine that which does not exist. Some call that gift madness. Another term of used is creativity.
We, “The Wreck”
In this poem, the speaker uses first-person perspective, but wrapped within the plural form, so that it becomes a tale of two people: lovers once, but now no more. The controlling metaphor is taking a ride upon “the drunk boat out of port” and the poem overflows with imagery of trusting love to be as stable as trusting the treacherous waters beneath a vulnerable vessel. The point being that even after the love is gone and both have gone their ways, they will always at some level—if only in memories across great distances never shared—still be a singular unit in some respect; they will always retain the remnant of being a “we.”
