Bereavement - ““Mid-Term Break”
The speaker was deprived of his brother when he was in college. He went home to find that his brother had passed on. The speaker recalls, “Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops/And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him/For the first time in six weeks. Paler now.” The brother’s paleness is a validation of his departure. The speaker’s midterm break overlapped with his brother’s interment.
Stillbirth - “Elegy for a Still-Born Child”
The speaker is grieving a stillbirth. The speaker asserts, “Doomsday struck when your collapsed sphere/Extinguished itself in our atmosphere.” The extinguishing of the child’s ‘collapsed sphere’ refers to the stillbirth which made it palpable that the child would not live on.
Gardening - “Digging” and “Follower”
The speaker watches his father as he plows the ground in “Digging and Following”. In “Digging,” the father utilizes a spade to groom the grounds after which he sets up flower beds. In “Follower”, the father plows the fields proficiently using horses. The speaker’s father was a formidable farmer who impelled his son enormously.
