The Halo That Would Not Light- poem response 5

A very sad, dark subject is childhood death; which is why writing a poem about it makes said poem so powerful. In class we talked about effect of this poem, and how it made us feel. The detail and description said in so little words is extremely effective in creating a vivid picture in my head. The overwhelming theme of descriptive words were ones that portrayed dark images. The first line has the darkest, yet most descriptive word as "Raptor." A raptor as a way to describe a bird is so dark and gloomy that it immediately starts the poem off on a sad note. The next line had the words "scarab- colored hollow." This creates the image of a dark hole in the ground, AKA a grave. Saying that the raptor put the tiny baby into a grave is horrid. My favorite lines of the poem are, "Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back and forth with no one in them." The wind, or the raptor (I'm not quite sure which one) are hunting these abandon, old, parks. I just imagine this dark, foggy, cold, breezy, play ground. It has squeeky, creepy swings that children once played on, yet now, those children are dead. I am amazed that only a couple of lines could produce such a vivid picture in my mind.

I really liked what someone said in class while discussing the line, "Of your endless childhood." I was very confused when the poem said this, because I feel like the child didn't really have a childhood. Someone suggested that maybe the endless childhood, is how people will remember that child. No one will ever know anything about the child, because they had died so young, with so much of his or her life undetermined. Therefor, in everyone's memory, the child who passed, will always be stuck in childhood. Such a sad concept, but very profound. I was again amazed how the author was able to say and portray so much in so little words.