Insignificant
Insignificant - meaning Summary
Small Moments, Large Response
The poem lists small, seemingly trivial occurrences—a loss of savor, bumblebees in hair, a nurse’s mixed expression—and shows how they cluster around a painful moment. A speaker receives unsettling news at a clinic, mishears a call, and runs toward a railroad only to find ordinary trains. The poem suggests how minor, everyday details can shape disorientation, grief, or a sudden emotional impulse, transforming the insignificant into meaning.
Read Complete AnalysesA series of small, on their own insignificant, occurrences. Salt lost half its savor. Two yellow- striped bumblebees got lost in my hair. When I freed them they droned away into the afternoon. At the clinic the nurse's face was half pity and part pride. I was not glad for the news. Then I thought I heard you call, and I, running like water, headed for the railroad track. It was only the Baltimore and the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe. Small insignificancies.
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