Manual Labor
In the poem, "I Know the Grandmother One Had Hands", the narrator tells about how her grandmother is constantly doing things with her hands. These things include knitting, mending, cooking, and fixing. This makes the narrator quite jealous of this labor, because she wants her grandmother to spend more time with her. The narrator is assumed to be a young child, because she does not seem to realize that, although it is important to spend time with your family, labor is sometimes the only way to keep a family afloat financially. The very fact that her grandmother is spending so much time doing all of these things shows that she loves the narrator very much, and wants a better life for her.
Love
Love is a common theme in many works of literature, because it is so universal. Seen in many of Green's poems, love takes the form of both young and old, new and old. Love is often described as more of a commitment, like in the poem, "Who Will be the Messenger of This Land". Instead of saying, "who will be the messenger", you could also say, "who will love this land", or "who will care for it". Love is one of the driving forces of the world, and without it, many sacrifices for the better (or worse) may not be made.
Initiative
In the poem, "Who Will be the Messenger of This Land", the narrator proposes that very question. In this new land with so much to offer, who will rise up and be its leader? Who will bring the vital strength that humans can bring to land to make it more vibrant with life? The narrator asks all of these questions, but no one appears to answer her. As the poem goes on, the narrator starts to wonder if she should be the one that does all of these victorious things - maybe she should lead the land to a new era. Without taking initiative to start something new or better, hardly anything would get done.
