Death

This entire poem represents a reflection on death: on the people who have been lost to the poem's speaker, and the impending death of someone close to her. Death is presented in several different ways. After the section called "In Place of a Dedication," the poem jumps immediately into portraying death as silence with the imagery of snow falling among trees. This stanza ends with death personified as a silence that sings to those who are aware of it.

Later in the poem, in the third section, death is presented as a young, beautiful woman, who is competing with the poem's speaker for her lover's attention. It is always present between them, always in the room with them. Even when they are apart, they are both aware of it.

The last sections of the poem deal with awareness of death after it has occurred. The poet wonders what...