A Letter from Home
A Letter from Home - meaning Summary
Distance, Resilience, and Unspoken Grief
The poem presents a speaker reading a letter from a woman at home, whose news of weather, birds, harvest, illness, and loss reveals a resilient life. The speaker feels removed from that world and recognizes that the writer withholds her grief. The closing keepsake of dried herbs and flowers makes the letter tangible, while the crosses by her name suggest distance, mortality, or remembered suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesShe sends me news of blue jays, frost, Of stars and now the harvest moon That rides above the stricken hills. Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain, And lists what is already lost. Here where my life seems hard and slow, I read of glowing melons piled Beside the door, and baskets filled With fennel, rosemary and dill, While all she could not gather in Or hid in leaves, grow black and falls. Here where my life seems hard and strange, I read her wild excitement when Stars climb, frost comes, and blue jays sing. The broken year will make no change Upon her wise and whirling heart; - She knows how people always plan To live their lives, and never do. She will not tell me if she cries. I touch the crosses by her name; I fold the pages as I rise, And tip the envelope, from which Drift scraps of borage, woodbine, rue.
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