Within this poem, the speaker describes her mother in a series of several metaphors with roots in the natural world. The speaker begins by characterizing her mother as water, with a powerful and revealing effect on the narrator. Next, she portrays her mother as the eye of the moon, with an enveloping, gravitational pull. The third metaphor depicts the speaker's mother as the sunrise, with a warm energy that streams over the speaker.
In the fourth stanza, the structure of the poem shifts slightly and three metaphors come in succession. First, the mother is a fish’s gill, a breathing organ vital to underwater survival. Then, the mother is the brilliant flame tree, a plant known for its striking scarlet leaves. Then, the mother becomes the crab’s leg and fried plantains, whose smell has a replenishing effect on the speaker.
The fifth and final stanza is a single line—a quotation from the mother addressing the speaker, which urges the speaker to go into her “wide futures.”
