The first line of "Move On" sounds almost like an apology: "There may not be enough to go around." It never says what is in short supply. It could be love, comfort, fairness or time, and that vagueness lets the whole poem grow out of a feeling of scarcity. By the end the speaker has turned the idea around, because time, at least, is "infinite." Between those two claims runs an argument about how a damaged person might stop waiting for rescue and start walking.
The central idea is the difference between blame and responsibility. The closing lines say "it was never your fault that things went wrong / But it is your destiny / To push and pull and find a way." Nothing is promised in return, and the poem says so bluntly: "There can't be a fairytale ending." The consolation lies in being released from guilt, not in a reward.
The imagery of the opening is made of paper. "I am the dotted line down the side of your notebook paper / I am the place where your story tears itself off of the book." Anyone who has ripped a page from a school notebook knows the ragged fringe left by the perforations. The speaker becomes an edge, a point of separation. The verbs around that image, "edging and breaking / And falling out," are present participles that never finish, so the self seems permanently mid-tear. What the tear produces is "fragmented and all alone / And ridiculous." That last adjective sits on a line by itself, as if the speaker were mocking herself or himself before anyone else could. The phrase "crippled life" is just as blunt.
Then the scale suddenly swells. The torn-off scrap declares, "I am the creation spot," and borrows the voice of the landscape: "River deep and ocean swept and cliffs high and mighty." The repeated "and" piles up grandeur, and "high and mighty" carries a faint note of arrogance that fits the paradoxical "ego let down that builds to destroy." Reassuring commands follow, "Don't doubt me," "Don't fear me," spoken by "the world above me" and "the mother all around me." The "I" turns into "we" ("We are one in the same"), and the "we" turns toward a "you": "we call your name / And we draw you out." The poem may be a self-address or a voice speaking to a reader. The text doesn't settle it, and that ambiguity is part of its pull.
There is no regular meter or rhyme, and the poem is a single unbroken block, with no stanza breaks to rest in. Line lengths swing from the long, trailing "And falling out into the new pattern of this crippled life" to the clipped "And ridiculous." Instead of rhyme, the poem uses repetition. "I am" opens four lines in a row. "No one really chose this / No one really knows this" and "no one really holds this" make a refrain, and the word "really" gives the lines a tired, conversational sound. Paired verbs such as "scuffled and bargained" and "push and pull" add a physical, effortful rhythm. The vocabulary of trade also runs underneath: "enough to go around," "bargained," "invested." Emotional life is treated as an economy with limited funds.
The most interesting passage is the list of beliefs: "fathers are brave / And mothers are loving / And gods are forgiving / And sins are rewarding." The first three are comforting, and the fourth bends the pattern. Judging by the context, it may name a hope that suffering or wrongdoing must somehow pay off, but the poem leaves the reader to decide. Either way, these are called a "dream" in which "you" have invested "as much of their soul" as anyone, a tender and slightly pitying line, softened by the word "dear."
That tenderness is what makes the poem worth reading. "Move on" is usually glib advice, and the poem takes it back by making the movement hard: pushing, pulling, finding a way. The final "simply" can be read as ironic or as hard-won plainness. The abstractions sometimes crowd together, but the notebook-page image and the refusal of a neat happy ending give the poem a clear, honest center.