This Moment

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

            This poem was selected for the Library of Congress Poetry 180 project, which encourages students to read poetry by providing a poem for everyday of the school year. When I initially read “This Moment” it reminded me of the introduction to Einstein’s Dreams when the narrator briefly describes different scenes happening on a given day. I decided to begin my blog with this poem because it enforces what I said about Boland’s propensity to describe and reflect on simple, everyday activities in her poems, as she writes about this moment. 

            Boland uses open form in this poem with her absence of rhyme scheme, line length, and metrical pattern. The entire poem is characterized by its imagery especially in line 11 when a mother lovingly catches her child. In line 10 there is a simile comparing a window’s color to butter. Butter is warm and soft and comparing the window to butter adds to the cozy, nostalgic feel of the poem. In the second stanza two enjambments occur. Grammatical and logical sense run from the end of one line to the beginning of a second. When Boland cut up the sentence like this, the poem becomes slightly dark. The enjambment makes the line read as though “to happen” and “out of sight” are afterthoughts. “Things are getting ready” is exciting but “to happen” seems almost foreboding and “out of sight” is sinister. Finally, the poem’s tone is significant because Boland’s message is conveyed through her tone. She sets the scene with a neighborhood at dusk. Dusk has the connotation of being a strange and sleepy time between two very different phases- day and night. Her tone continues as nostalgic and thoughtful as though the narrator is a person sitting on a porch in this neighborhood looking around herself. The poem ends with the tone reminding the reader that it was all about a simple, fleeting moment that passes just as the moths fly away and the fruit gets a little riper with every passing second.