The Mitchells
The Mitchells - meaning Summary
Shared Rural Identity
The poem presents a quiet rural scene of two men sitting on a pole they have dug and will raise, eating simple food as bees and blossoms fill the heat. Through small details—drought talk, an oil-stained hat, ritual phrases—they are revealed as kin or members of the same social world: both declare themselves Mitchells. The poem meditates on shared identity, work-worn habit, and restrained affection amid the Australian landscape.
Read Complete AnalysesI am seeing this: two men are sitting on a pole they have dug a hole for and will, after dinner, raise I think for wires. Water boils in a prune tin. Bees hum their shift in unthinning mists of white bursaria blossom, under the noon of wattles. The men eat big meat sandwiches out of a styrofoam box with a handle. One is overheard saying: drought that year. Yes. Like trying to farm the road. The first man, if asked, would say I’m one of the Mitchells. The other would gaze for a while, dried leaves in his palm, and looking up, with pain and subtle amusement, say I’m one of the Mitchells. Of the pair, one has been rich but never stopped wearing his oil-stained felt hat. Nearly everything they say is ritual. Sometimes the scene is an avenue.
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