• This poem has a strong voice running through it. How would you describe the speaker’s mood?

Joyful and maybe questioning when he says “but you don’t tell her she’s too young to get the reference” and “…or Varandah- which isn’t even a name,”. The speaker also sounds like he is reassuring himself “…and coming from you it’ll just seem creepy.”

• Look at some of the more unexpected things the speaker in the poem finds beautiful, like leaves in the gutter or salt stains on shoes. Why are these details more interesting than a more obvious example of beauty, like flowers, would be?

They are more interesting because flowers are a more over used kind of beauty and leaves in a gutter, no one really looks at that to be pretty.

• What is the effect of the poet’s use of similes that offer more than one comparison of an image, such as “the sky, lit up like a question or / an applause meter” or “raindrops / like jewels or glass or those bright beads / girls put between the letters of the / bracelets that spell out their beautiful names”? How does this technique add to the overall feeling of the poem?

The poet is making a point, repetition of beauty and it makes the poem more enthusiastic.

• What actually happens in this poem? What do you know about the speaker’s life?

In the poem the guy is just taking a stroll in some sort of park, enjoying the little things in life.