Mothers

This poem is very interesting mainly because the speaker is not only telling the story of her mother, but the speaker is telling the story through a perspective of a young child. The fact that the speaker uses many first person pronouns shows that the speaker was at one point the child, however there is a repetition of the word "remember" so one can infer that the story is based on a childhood memory. The Motif that seems to be more predominant is curiosity. A child is known to be very curious about many things in life, and the fact that the poem is told as a childhood memory of the speakers mother makes it necessary for curiosity to be the main motif . The speaker seems to question many things about her mother, mainly through the things she witnesses triggers that emotion of curiosity. The speaker uses many words that relate to dark or darkness. Words such as dark, night, moonlight, black. When one thinks of these words they tend to think about something being hard to see, or unclear. The effect from this reveals that maybe everything around the child seemed dark because she could not understand what was going on with her mother, many aspects seemed to be unclear, as to the speakers connection with the mother. This becomes evident in the third stanza when the speaker says "mommy always sat in the dark i don't know how i knew that but she did" the speaker gives the reader many situations dealing with her and her mother, however judging by this poem one can infer that the speaker is missing a key element about her mother that would finally quench her thirst for answers.