Sometimes
Sometimes - meaning Summary
Kinship with the World
The poem describes sudden moments—caught by a birdcall, wind, or distant bark—that transport the speaker inward. Memories dissolve into a deeper kinship with nature as the soul imaginatively becomes trees, animals, and clouds. This metamorphosis leaves the speaker alienated from ordinary selfhood and facing an existential question: how to answer or integrate this otherness. The final line frames the poem as a quiet confrontation with identity and belonging.
Read Complete AnalysesSometimes, when a bird calls, or a wind moves through the brush, or a dog barks in a distant farmyard, I must listen a long time, and hush. My soul flies back to where, before a thousand forgotten years begin, the bird and the waving wind were like me, and were my kin. My soul becomes a tree, an animal, a cloud woven across the sky. Changed and unfamiliar it turns back and questions me. How shall I reply?
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