It's Not (Smith) - LC English

• Coversation between poet and her sister

• Use of abandon is harsh and implies intent

That death was thinking of you or me or our family, or the woman our father would abandon when he died.

Death leads the father rather tha driving or dragging him away from life.

Death led him past the aisles of tools, the freezer lined with meat, the television saying over and over, Seek and ye shall find

• Image of their father being their everything is heartbreaking

• Implication that the father would WANT to go where death is leading him

So why do we insist that he has vanished, that death ran off with our everythin worth having?

• Image of life being like swimming

• Questions if mortal existence is the only one

“swimming through his life” “gliding further into what life itself denies”

The poet acknowledges that we don’t know where her father is now. Hemay be gone from mortal existence but does that mean that he cannot exist on any level?

He is only gone so far as we can tell

• When I try = faith or spirituality

• White = heavenly clouds

• Implication of an ethereal otherworldly entity

When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair in the distance like an eternity