Summary
A few comic books are the only colorful part of the landscape at the filling station. They're sitting on top of a doily, which is itself placed on a taboret (a small table or stool) belonging to the wicker furniture set. The comic books are beside a begonia plant. The speaker wonders why each of these items—the plant, the taboret, and the doily—are at the filling station. The speaker pauses to describe the doily in detail. It is embroidered in a pattern of daisies on a gray crocheted background. The speaker considers that somebody must have created the landscape by crocheting the doily and watering the begonia, or even sprinkling oil on it. Moreover, somebody must have arranged oil cans, reading "Esso" (a brand name for an oil company), in a row, so that they appear to repeat the syllable "so" to passing cars. The speaker concludes that the person doing these things has done so as an act of love.
Analysis
The beginning of this poem focuses on the dirty, ugly, and utilitarian aspects of the filling station. In its second half, however, the speaker seems to have relaxed enough to take in the incongruously lovely elements of the place. The begonia, taboret, comic books, and doily stand out because they exist only to beautify the filling station—they are impractical, and, as the speaker notes, require work to create and maintain. These objects also carry a connotation of domesticity and femininity, both because they provide ornamentation and because they are linked to the kinds of domestic work usually associated with women. Thus, as the speaker considers their maker, she also suggests the invisible presence of a mother or someone else conducting these private tasks within the public space of the filling station. The very fact that these objects that are solely oriented towards comfort and beauty exist—and that somebody has used time and skill to create them—moves and consoles the speaker.
These ornamental objects are juxtaposed with the overwhelmingly rough, workaday surroundings. Even as the poem's speaker begins to reconsider the filling station and the people who run it, recasting them as a loving family rather than as threatening strangers, Bishop uses this juxtaposition to create a compelling tension and prevent the poem from falling into a saccharine tone. This juxtaposition between beauty and ugliness, adornment and practicality, and femininity and masculinity at times exists within a single image—for example, that of the "hirsute," or hairy, begonia.
In the early stanzas of the poem, the speaker is overwhelmingly distressed by and uninterested in the filling station. Several specific moments, however, mark brief departures from this attitude. One of these is a brief parenthetical phrase, within which the speaker takes note of the family running the filling station. Another comes at the start of the third stanza, when the speaker asks a question: there, the interrogative gives the impression that the speaker is curious and open rather than defensive and closed off.
As the poem reaches its conclusion, Bishop repeats both of those moments, inserting parentheticals and questions. The speaker notes that the taboret is "(part of the set)" and that the doily is "(Embroidered in daisy stitch/with marguerites, I think,/and heavy with gray crochet.)" Within the parentheses, in other words, are detailed, patient descriptions that put these objects in context and reveal the speaker's increasing attention to and interest in them. The first half of the poem's fifth stanza, meanwhile, consists entirely of questions: "Why the extraneous plant?/Why the taboret?/Why, oh why, the doily?" Anaphoria and the plaintive repetition of the word "why" in the final question reveal that the speaker is deeply touched by, and to a degree troubled by, the impractical loveliness of the scene. Finally, by the end of the poem Bishop departs from the harsh sounds of the early stanzas, choosing sibilant, soothing, lullaby-like sounds instead—most notably the repetitive "S" sounds of the final stanza, and the incantatory line "esso—so—so—so." The filling station becomes a place of soothing, even maternal care.
