DDCPoetry

A short narrative poem. However, this poem made me wonder about the difference between what the mind wants and what the body is willing to do.  The poem is a memory set up in the first line, "Last night when my work was done."  In my notes I wonder what "work" means in this context.  Is the work something different or something the same -- or maybe a little of both. "And my estranged hands / Were becoming mutually interested / In such forgotten things as pulses"  There's a grim sense in these lines -- a distance in which is defined by the language of "estranged" then turning "mutually interested.  The "pulses" image has a weird positive and negative connotation for me.  The comparison is a simile to "forgotten things", so there's a feeling of a second wind, a pulse that's interesting, but there's also a hidden history here of why are pulses forgotten.  Good reasons?  Bad reasons? The last four lines encaps...

What struck me the most was the title.  How paradoxical the language is of "Late Summer" and "First Day."  What the title does for me is set up a comparative interest that revolves around time -- or rather timing. The sun has burnt through That which resembled a mask was just itself: From the construction, it's not the sun that is the mask, but the what the sun burnt through.  For me the lines is a play on what to imagine because of the "that."  What does "that" refer to if it is not the sun?  "There is nothing / between the light and its source."  From the next two lines, there's an ephemeral moment that expands the discussion to what it means to illuminate -- be present -- from a source which doesn't necessarily has to be present to illuminate.  Memory is a good example of "There is nothing / between the light and its source."  How about a phantom pain, "There is nothing / between the light and its source....