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What Does This Poem Mean?! Asap?

By admin Posted in: tent

What does this poem mean?
Hand Shadows
Mary Cornish
My father put his hands in the white light
of the lantern, and his palms became a horse
that flicked its ears and bucked; an alligator
feigning sleep along the canvas wall leapt up
and snapped its jaws in silhouette, or else
a swan would turn its perfect neck and drop
a fingered beak toward that shadowed head
to lightly preen my father’s feathered hair.
Outside our tent, skunks shuffled in the woods
beneath a star that died a little every day,
and from a nebula of light diffused
inside Orion’s sword, new stars were born.
My father’s hands became two birds, linked
by a thumb, they flew one following the other.

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  1. Slooby Says

    it symbolizes the beauty of the world. the connotation of the descriptions of the shadow puppets that the father is making could have either been bad or good, which is a metaphor for the world being bad and good. however, the author chose to make them good and beautiful, which shows that she chooses to focus on the good in the world rather than the bad

  2. alissa gale Says

    The stars dying is the speaker’s father and the nebula creating stars is the young speaker. The father making two bird shadows that are linked is a metaphor for the speaker being linked genetically to his dad and will follow him after he dies in an ongoing progression of life, like the stars that are always dying and being born.
    Religiously, the father is The Father, God, and creating life, like the shadows the father’s hands create, and the lantern’s light is the light of God and divine energy needed to create all the shadows of life.

  3. Anonymous Says

    It means that you need to cherish everything because things are constantly changing, disappearing, and being created. You need to move along as the world around you!

  4. . Says

    It means you should put that crap down and read something interesting.

  5. Sofie Says

    I think that this poem means that there are many different aspects to everything. Something as simple as hand shadow puppets can transform from a crocodile, to two linked birds, to a swan
    In life, you can’t just look at thinks one sidedly, you need to look at it from different angles, because something that may look very bad can turn into something amazing.
    The line about he stars symbolizes that everything, even stars, must come to an end. But it also shows that every ending has a new beginning. I translate this to mean even if something very bad happens in your life and one of your stars fades, good things will eventually come out of it, like new stars.

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