Marianne Baskin's poem is about time passing and the way a person looks back at it. It opens with a striking image: time's wings have "turned into scattered feathers," as if something that once flew fast is now only what it left behind. Around that come small signs of loss and quiet change, such as forgotten, unwritten letters, rain on the grass, and flowers pressed against a window.
The speaker seems wistful, but not despairing. The title suggests remembrance, and the "sugar plums" that "have danced" read like a faint echo of childhood or earlier seasons. Then the poem turns. Each feather "lands / and / grows," and words "blossom / to this / year's eyes." Loss becomes a kind of planting.
The broken, spaced-out lines feel like feathers drifting down one by one. The mood is gentle and reflective, tinged with sadness but ending on renewal: the past is gone, yet it feeds what can be written and seen now.