Analysis

The poem opens with a reflection on a birth that happened three years ago.

 We do not know who was born yet, but we know it was ‘three years ago to the hour’ so it is an exact anniversary of the birthday.

We are then taken on a journey ‘the twenty miles of summer lanes’ past slow moving Sunday cars (people are often accused of pleasure riding on Sundays, thus driving much slower), which irritates her daughter. They pass cows lazily swishing their tales in fields.

The whole atmosphere seems to be lazy and slow.

The second stanza builds to the birth relating the weather to it ‘late summer heat overspilling into harvest’ as if the heat is unusual and it is this warmth that causes the baby to be born.

The idea of a harvest reflects birth, as crops are grown and picked when they have reached readiness, just as a baby is born when it has grown to the right size.

There is a real sense of fertility with ‘apples reddening on heavy trees’ and ‘our fingers purple’ from picking the plentiful supply of berries. The red colour perhaps a reflection of the colour of the baby when it is born, fresh from the womb.

‘the child coming easy’ reflects an easy birth, but this is then contradicted by ‘too soon, in the wrong place’ as if they are not ready for it yet.

The third stanza pictures the day-old child ‘under an umbrella on the beach’ as a latecomer at summer’s festival, as if late for this, but early for autumn.

The baby seems ‘out of season’ as if she was not ready for summer, but should have been an autumn baby, so seems out of place here’, but there is a sense of welcome to ‘summer’s festival’ as if the baby has been born into a celebration or party.

Clarke expressed her metaphorical attachment to the child ‘and I’m hooked again’ as if she is tied totally to the child positively, although the idea of a life sentence on the next line makes it seem almost like a prison sentence, so it is less positive, but does show that there are two sides to this relationship.

Even the power of the sea was not strong enough to take her from her child.

We move back to the present, three years later, in the final stanza. Clarke has baked her daughter a cake shaped like their house and there is a sense of fertility still with the ‘blossom’ metaphor to describe the streamers and balloons on the ‘old trees’ at their home.

The sea is linked to this present scene with a drink of ‘cold blue ocean’ which we assume is water.

There is a sense of biblical imagery with the water representing purity, the candles represent light and goodness and there is a sense of sacrifice with three drops of ‘probably last blood’ as if being three years old is represented by three drops of blood, possibly to symbolise the pain and harsh reality of life, that all is not pure and good.