Summary

The speaker reflects on her life at home following her return from Neverland. After the first decade of self-enforced solitude, she began accepting invitations in order to keep up appearances. She thinks about her old friend Peter Pan and why she waits for something she cannot name — not to be eternally young (with all its adolescent challenges). Peter himself was in between childhood and adulthood, and though immortal, clothed himself in dead things. The speaker, meanwhile, grows up at the mercies of society and time. Now, widowed, she waits at her window hoping Peter will take her back.

Analysis

“Wendy, Waiting” establishes its main character and context in the short, compact title. It begins by using anaphora in a repetition of “Not easy”(Lines 1, 4), which introduces the poem as an internal monologue. The speaker reflects on a wide swath of time, beginning with “those...