Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Lawrence Raab’s "On the Island" is a meditation on time, observation, and the ephemeral nature of experience. The poem moves fluidly between the immediate pleasures of a day at the shore and the deeper undercurrents of nostalgia, memory, and the quiet passage of time. Through simple, direct language and carefully detailed imagery, Raab captures both the joy of the present and the inevitability of its fading.

The poem begins with a scene of renewal: "After a night of wind we are surprised / by the light, how it flutters up from the back of the sea / and leaves us at ease." The contrast between the previous night’s storm and the morning’s calm sets the tone for the poem’s theme of transition. The phrase "flutters up from the back of the sea" suggests a delicate emergence, reinforcing the sense that nature offers its gifts without warning, effortlessly shifting from turbulence to tranquility.

As the poem settles into the day, the speaker describes the family’s leisurely activities: "We can walk along the shore / this way or that, all day. Sit in the spiky grass / among the low whittled bushes, listening / to crickets, to the whisk of the small waves, / the rattling back of stones." The repetition of "this way or that" underscores a sense of boundless time, of a day stretching without demands. The sensory details—the feel of the grass, the sound of waves and stones—immerse the reader in the quiet richness of the moment.

A book, “Golden Nature Guide”, becomes a source of reflection, instructing the family that "Observation... is the key to science. / Look all around you. Some beaches / may be quite barren except for things washed up." This interjection of an instructional voice reinforces the theme of noticing, of paying attention to the world in order to understand it. Yet, what follows—a list of seemingly insignificant found objects ("A buoy and a blue bottle, a lightbulb / cloudy but unbroken")—suggests that meaning is often found in small, overlooked details. The beach’s treasures are not rare or extraordinary, but rather ordinary things transformed by their being noticed, collected, and appreciated.

The speaker’s daughter embodies this spirit of discovery: "For an hour / my daughter gathers trinkets, bits of good luck. / She sings the song she’s just invented: / Everybody knows when the old days come." Her song is striking—childlike and mysterious, yet deeply resonant. The "old days" suggest an awareness, however unconscious, of time’s movement, of past and present folding into one another.

The poem then expands into a broader meditation on time and memory: "Although it is October, today falls into the shape / of summer, that sense of languid promise / in which we are offered another / and then another spell of flawless weather." The illusion of time slowing down, of summer extending beyond its limits, mirrors the way certain moments feel suspended in memory. "It is the weather of Sundays, / the weather of memory," Raab writes, linking the timeless, unhurried quality of the present to recollections of childhood.

This recollection takes the speaker back to his own past: "I can see / myself sitting on a porch looking / out at water, the discreet shores / of a lake." The past is evoked not as a specific memory but as a feeling—of mystery, of childhood imaginings. The speaker remembers "Three or four white pines / were enough of a mystery, how they shook / and whispered, how at night I felt them / leaning against my window, like the beginning / of a story in which children must walk / deeper and deeper into a dark forest." The comparison of the trees to the opening of a fairytale suggests both wonder and fear, the way childhood often holds a quiet awareness of the unknown.

The memory continues: "and are afraid, yet calm, unaware / of the arrangements made for them to survive." This line is particularly striking—capturing how children move through the world with an innocence that adults understand in hindsight. The phrase "arrangements made for them to survive" suggests the unseen guidance and care that allows children to feel safe even in uncertainty.

Returning to the present, the speaker observes his wife and daughter engaged in their own quiet rituals: "My daughter counts her shells and stones, / my wife clips bayberry from the pathway." The act of collecting—whether trinkets, memories, or moments—becomes central to the poem. The speaker, too, engages in observation: "I raise / an old pair of binoculars, follow the edge of the sky / to the lighthouse, then down into the waves." His act of looking mirrors the poem’s larger theme of paying attention, of trying to capture what is fleeting.

This desire to understand the world is reflected again in the “Golden Nature Guide”: "A steady push of wind," we read in the book, / "gives water its rolling, rising and falling motion. / As the sea moves up and down, the wave itself / moves forward." This scientific explanation of waves parallels the speaker’s thoughts on memory and time. Like waves, moments rise and fall, moving forward even as they seem to stay in place.

The poem closes with a scene of quiet acceptance: "On the table in front of the house / is the day’s collection: sea-glass / and starfish, a pink claw, that blue bottle— / some to be taken home, arranged in a box, / laid on a shelf, later rediscovered, later / thrown away, casually, without regret." The collected objects, like the memories associated with them, will be cherished for a time, then forgotten or discarded. The phrase "casually, without regret" suggests an understanding that this is the natural order of things—what once seemed significant will one day lose its importance.

The final lines offer a quiet resolution: "and some of it, even now, to be discarded, / like the lesser stones, and the pale / chipped shells which are so alike / we can agree that saving one or two will be enough." The act of choosing what to keep and what to let go becomes symbolic of how we curate memory, how we decide what moments endure. The agreement that "saving one or two will be enough" speaks to an acceptance of impermanence, a recognition that we cannot hold onto everything, nor do we need to.

"On the Island" is a poem about presence, the way small acts of noticing and collecting shape our experience of time. It acknowledges that much of what we treasure will eventually be lost, but rather than mourning this inevitability, Raab treats it with quiet reverence. The poem embraces the fleeting nature of beauty, of memory, and of life itself, finding meaning not in permanence, but in the act of paying attention, of holding something for a while before letting it go.

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