The poem sets off with a very welcoming feeling since the “ turquoise pool rose up to meet” them.
This is personification because pools can’t actually move. This makes it Seem like the pool is rising up to invite them in and it gives us a warm sensation. In the second line a “ silver afterthought” is mentioned. This is a metaphor and suggests that they are really spontaneous and random in life because they’ve only just see the slide and decide it would be fun to slide down.
Lastly they “ did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy” which means that their priority in life right now is the importance of boys.
This shows that they don’t have a lot of things to worry about right now and that they don’t have any responsibility or burden. The first part of the stanza reinforces how carefree and innocent the teenage years are by again using carefree dictions. They don’t care what people thought since they are young, so even getting up from the pool they were “ shaking water off our limbs. They are showing off to other people in the pool especially the boys since they were their only prime concerns back then.
As they proudly “ rose and paraded the concrete” they made it look like they were really confident and that when you think of parades you’ll usually think of a festival and people showing off their moves, so it emphasis on there airfare life since all they think about is how they look in other peoples point of view.
Another point is that when you’re young you usually like sweeter food like “ cheery colas, dreamless” and those foods create a sense of innocence in them, because cherry cola is a sweeter version of a normal cola and that dreamless are made up with different kinds of food and drinks and they look really colorful so this suggests that they were still young and those food are associated with their childhood. In the last stanza poem takes on to a darker mood; the poet creates a contrast between the past and the future. When the “ bees staggered into root beer cups and drowned” it foreshadows what will happen later on in the poem.
Related essay: “ Franz Kafka and His Father Relationship”
This is also where the mood Of the poem changes slightly but it then still reverts back to the childish innocence again. The word “ drowned ” is a very powerful word, when you think of that word, you’ll think of suffocating and this suggests that their childhood will eventually drown like the bees. As they get older their interest will also change, from liking ” cotton candy torches” to “ sweet as furtive kisses” these two phrases are compared to one another, this shows that their idea fun has now changed that’s because here aging. The syntax used in ” Cherry.
Elm.