The Sisters
The Sisters - meaning Summary
Memory Shaded by Sunlight
Two elderly sisters sit in vine-shadowed sunlight on a veranda, their slow conversation likened to winter creeks. They recall youthful courtship—horses, dancing, leather, wine—and the dolls and ponies of childhood, all moving in the yellow shadows. Each considers her separate married life and the birth of a first child, and one voices a private, roaming interior life. The poem frames memory, companionship, and quiet solitude.
Read Complete AnalysesIn the vine-shadows on the veranda; under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun, sit two sisters. Their slow voices run like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind, and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda. They remember the gay young men on their tall horses who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together; even their dolls and ponies, all they have left behind moves in the yellow shadows on the veranda. Thinking of their lives apart and the men they married thinking of the marriage-bed and the birth of their first child, they look down smiling. “My life was wide and wild, and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle I walk alone,” say the old sisters on the veranda.
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