After Trauma

The poem takes place at a time in the speaker’s life when he is weary from pain. This prompts the impossible desire to return to “the beginning,” which holds a false promise of ease (2). On the one hand, the speaker acknowledges his inability to escape his circumstances when he states he is “wrong” for thinking the beginning won’t hold pain. The physics of space and time prevent his initial wish. But on the other hand, the speaker accepts that he is wrong in a different sense. While the beginning may seem like an easier time, it in fact itself is a kind of “wound” (10).

The Spring

In the second and last stanza, the speaker evokes a new setting “where the water / Bubbles up / At the spring” (7-9). A spring is a natural point on the earth's surface where groundwater emerges. That it “bubbles up” from...