“Gold” - by Pat Mora

 

About the poet

Born on 19th January 1942, Pat Mora is an American poet and author of books for adults, teens and children. Her grandparents came to El Paso from Northern Mexico.

Analysis:

The poem has three stanzas of varying size. The first stanza has 11 lines while the second has only 8 lines. The third with just three lines is the shortest stanza. “Gold” is a lyrical free verse on the theme of home.

In “Gold” Mora challenges the traditional idea of a home as a place with walls and roofs.

In the first stanza, the poet personifies not only the sun but also the wind. In addition, the first stanza sets time and space of the poem, too; it is a late afternoon desert scene. There are no references to any human inventions indicating a specific temporal setting in the poem. Together with that, the use of simple present tense gives the poem a sense of agelessness. If one has some idea about the South-west of the USA and Northern Mexico, one would know that the brief period of time just before the sunset is the most pleasant time of the day in that part of the world. The sun – personified as “Sun” - is no longer the blinding sheet of light that threatens to dry the life out of you. Instead, it “paints the desert/ with its gold”. The sentient Sun thinks the desert deserves to be painted and generously uses its own reservoir of gold to enrich the evening time desert by painting it gold. The poet uses present simple to imply the repetitive nature of this undertaking. Gold is the predominant colour of the poem indicating the euphoric feeling generated in the poetic persona by her experience.

It is while this magical transformation is taking place that the poetic persona “climbs the hills” in search of her “favourite rock”. After many such visits the poetic persona has found just the right spot to take in the wealth that lay at her feet gilded by the sun. While the poetic persona is on her way to her favourite rock, the wind, like a playful/mischievous child or even an affectionate yet thoughtless adult, “runs around boulders/ ruffles” her hair. The poet uses the technique of pathetic fallacy in using “paints” and “runs” to describe the activities of Sun and the wind.  And by taking away the definite article “the” to pre-modify “Sun” and by capitalizing the first letter, the poet cements the anthropomorphised status of Sun.

On the rock, the poetic persona is not alone. The fact that skittish animals such as lizards deign to share space with her attests to her non-threatening nature. In addition, she feels that they, at least at that moment, are equal as indicated by the use of “company” in defining their relationship. While the lizards basked and the poetic persona took in the beauty in front of her, somebody else watches them: “a rabbit,/ ears stiff in the shade/ of a saguaro.” The creature’s wariness is indicated by the stiff ears; yet, it, too, does not flee. The poetic persona, the lizards and the rabbit see “eye to eye” – they have arrived at a shared moment in their shared appreciation of the beauty of the scene and the soothing wind after the scorching heat of the day.

In the second stanza, the poetic persona observes a fourth participant; a “Sparrow on saguaro” is watching the rabbit watching her and the lizards “in the gold/ of sun setting.” The visual image is a rich cameo dominated once again by the colour gold – signifying the value she places on what she is seeing. A fifth player, a “[h]awk sails on waves of light”. The hawk is compared to a sailing ship sailing on an ocean made of waves of light. The striking metaphor reminds me of a similar metaphor used to describe the movements of a less august bird by Emily Dickinson in “A Bird Came Down the Walk” where she, too, compares a small bird flying away to the movement of a sailing ship being rowed. The long vowel sounds used here indicate the unhurried movements of an ace predator lazily riding the thermal currents of the evening sky. From its august height, the hawk observes the shining eyes of the sparrow, rabbit, lizards and the poetic persona. In this moment of harmony the hawk sees only their shining eyes; consequently, she is not weighing up what she sees as food. In that sense, the bird, too, has become part of the moment of harmonious appreciation of peace and beauty. Together, they see the “red and purple sand/ rivers stream down the hill.”

The last stanza, a triplet, is a celebration of becoming and being. The poetic persona stretches her “arms wide as the sky/ like hawk extends her wings.” She identifies herself with the female hawk that is about to take to the sky indicating the strong feeling of jubilation she is experiencing in this unique yet repetitive moment of epiphany. “[T]his” – the evening time desert with its red and purple streams of sand, hills, valleys, the golden sun, playful wind, boulders, basking lizards, rabbits with stiff ears, watchful sparrows, giant cacti and circling hawks – she realizes is “home”.