The Winters Are So Short
poem 403
The Winters Are So Short - meaning Summary
Seasonal Interruptions and Resilience
Dickinson depicts winter as brief but consequential, interrupting human routines and the nesting of birds. The speaker describes packing up and reopening house with the seasons, framing life as fragile cycles of displacement and return. A remembered catastrophe — the Flood and Ararat — is invoked to contrast collective disbelief with the lingering effects of past scarcity. The poem reflects on recurrent disruption and the uneasy persistence of loss in ordinary life.
Read Complete AnalysesThe Winters are so short I’m hardly justified In sending all the Birds away And moving into Pod Myself for scarcely settled The Phoebes have begun And then it’s time to strike my Tent And open House again It’s mostly, interruptions My Summer is despoiled Because there was a Winter once And al the Cattle starved And so there was a Deluge And swept the World away But Ararat’s a Legend now And no one credits Noah
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