Second Poetry Response: "A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields"

The poem “A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields” was very interesting, at first I only caught on to little bits of the meaning, but after the second read it seemed to become clear to me. In the first stanza, the second and third line, it says, “The black cow grazing with her newborn calf− long legged, unsteady−” this stood out to me right away because of how compared to the other lines with just the punctuation made me stop, so from there I assumed that the author did that for a reason. To me I felt the author was describing his life as a child and his relationship with his grandmother and mother. The word “unsteady” in that line leads me to believe that as a child life was hard mostly with his mother in guessing. From the title I gathered that this author is probably of Asian decent because of the rice fields, and along with that I also feel like culture has a lot to do with this poem. In Asia, I know that family relationships are a lot different there compared to the ones here in the U.S. From the poem, I think the lines “my mother didn’t notice me from beyond the closed door of her youth” represents that in that in Asian culture until a child is older or an adult, they are just merely children who should not be seen nor heard. I think that part about his mother in that line represents the fact that he feels his mother should remember what she felt like as a child being ignored, and knowing that, she should know how he feels. But, in the end, the author’s mother just closed off the door that remembered her past. The last six lines only reiterate what I am talking about when it comes to his childhood and how the author felt. “But at times I see a shadow move slowly over these, a shadow freed from the past and from the future, that contains the footsteps of that childhood so light I can only think of squirrels slipping in and out of mango trees”, to me this really shows how the author grew up like a squirrel, he was quiet, yet wanted to be playful like squirrels are. When a squirrel is looking for food they are very quiet and try to go undetected to get what they want, but at the same time they are very playful creatures wanting to just play, but they have to suppress that playfulness sometimes. Also, from that same quote when the author talks about “a shadow freed from the past and from the future” that seems to represent the author himself as he has grown up, and how he will remember how hard it was not to be the playful side of the squirrel, but rather be the undetected, unnoticed squirrel. At the end of the day, the poem was very interesting, and had some pretty cool comparisons that really helped get the author’s point across.