Mary F. C. Pratt builds this poem like a list of addresses, each town followed by a small, sharp fragment. Put together, the fragments read like the scattered memories of one life, or perhaps several lives in one family. The places run from Poland and Ireland to Vermont, Ohio, Maine and New Guinea, which suggests journeys, migrations and a family history spread across continents. The poem never explains itself, though. "Three-eighths mystery" and "Two sons, their separate ways" are left to hang there, and we have to guess at the stories behind them.
The speaker sounds quiet and reflective, close to grieving but not dwelling on it. Some moments are tender ("How the stars came out"), some are frightening ("Crash and shatter," "First fear"), and some feel like endings: "The mantle falls," and a cemetery "filled with familiar names." The mood is hushed and wistful. By the end, in "Red oak. / Deep blue clay," the poem settles into the earth itself, as if memory and place have become the same thing.