Analysis of Beyond the Shelter
Run from the path to the front door
With paper shopping bag sagging
Under the weight of oat milk cartons
Crumbling into small rolled up balls in my palm
While hand searches pockets for the key to the lock
Do butterfly wings disintegrate in the rain like the bag?
Worn and weary, residual, wet dust on pavement
If they stop to see the long white cloud weaving
Between hill tops turning dark and damp and grey,
Feel the moisture pooling in the air and the cold wind
Breaking these pools into funneled waves of mist?
Unlock doors to weatherboard boxes
And strain acid droplets from hair, wrap
Hands and toes in warm wool socks, do butterflies crawl
Into flooding corners in the trees or sleeping bag leaves
Listening to the sound of droplets on
Thin tin or wooden roof is there now a butterfly
Slotting itself flatly through the letter sized gap
In postbox, seeking refuge beside letters and spiders
Still lesser loved moth cousins?
We leave a window open and on the sill some cotton
Balls stuck together with the gloop
Of that sogged paper bag, atop it a coin
Weigh down the tiny bed.
Scheme | XABXXX XAXXX XCXXXXCXB XCXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011011 11010110 100111110 100011111011 111010101101 1101010001101 1010010011110 11111011110 01111010101 1010100010011 10110110111 0111110 011010111 10101111101 01101000111011 1001011101 111101111010 100110101011 0110100110010 1101110 11010100101110 11010101 11110101101 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,094 |
Words | 210 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 5, 9, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 219 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
About this poem
This poem shares the perspective of witnessing poverty and homelessness. In particular, a person witnessing it with a perspective of compassion and naivety,- feelings that seem more prevalent in a child than an adult counterpart, therefore framed in a context of innocence through the butterfly, using a we to still implicate the reader.
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"Beyond the Shelter" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/187147/beyond-the-shelter>.
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