isn't there still
something singing? The truth is: I don't know.
But sometimes I swear I hear it
This is a key turning point in the poem: the speaker moves away from despair and toward hope; likewise, away from images of death and destruction, and toward the simpler and quieter image of a daily dog walk. These lines are full of uncertainty: the persistence of beauty and joy ("something singing") in the world is phrased as a question, not a statement. Then, the speaker admits she doesn't even know the answer! But crucially, she chooses to turn her attention to that persistence anyway, and the phrase "I hear it" immediately connects back to the "singing." From here on out, the poem continues to wrestle with heavy topics but in a decidedly less hopeless tone. Limón furthermore gains the reader's trust not by assuming a role of all-knowing, arrogant authority, but by existing right down in the questions and uncertainty with us.
In an interview with PBS, Limón discussed this poetic technique:
"Poetry isn't a place of answers and easy solutions. It's a place where we can admit to an unknowing, own our private despair, and still, sometimes, practice beauty."
starlings
high and fevered among us, winter coming to lay
her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth
Though this poem is not primarily focused on the changing seasons, these lines add a subtle but important element by mentioning the approach of winter. Winter is a common symbol of death and loss, and in this poem, it reminds us that life is temporary. However, the speaker's resolve to live becomes extra meaningful against this backdrop.
Limón does a clever trick with temperature here: the starlings are "fevered," which mainly describes their crazed and hectic flight, but a fever is also a hot body temperature. This double meaning creates contrast with "cold corpse" in the next line, and shows that the songbirds, just like the speaker and her dog, are choosing to live boldly despite (or perhaps because of) the impending winter.
"The Leash" comes early in The Carrying, as the fourth poem in the book. Later in the book comes "Instructions for Not Giving Up," a similarly themed poem set in early spring that describes how to overcome loss and "whatever winter did to us." Though poetry collections do not generally follow a linear narrative, the approach of winter in this early poem may set up a subtle foreshadowing for "Instructions" to pick up in spring and continue the theme of resilience.
