Under the Lemon Tree

Under the Lemon Tree

Marsha De la O

By: Jaime Sheets

Thematic Statement

In the poem "Under The Lemon Tree" Marsha De La O transfers a message of grief in which is caused by her mother's passing. The speaker also goes into their memories of her mother and then eventually transitions to the speaker following their mother's path that was not fulfilled.

Figurative language and Tone

The poem begins with figurative language, which represents the speaker's emotion that is not deep depression, but instead a gentle sadness when reminded by the "mist" of her mother's tree.

As I Reached the second stanza the author's tone goes in to a contemplative reflection of how her mother often walked and observed her fruit and her intentions of what to do with the fruit. But as I read into the third and fourth stanza, ("But her plans didn't work out") the tone shifts to a more glum attitude because "her plans didn't work out implies that she had these positive future images for her self, but her plans to create something great "meringue and hollandaise" was overall brought to ruins by the lemon tree dying away in the fourth stanza. "lemons fall and fold into the earth and begin again," meaning that when the mother passed she left behind her plans, and they are able to be fulfilled by her spawn if chosen to.

Diction and Syntax

Starting with the second stanza, the syntax consists of commas and periods. The syntax that occurs in the poem is most affective in the fourth stanza. The phrases followed by dashes, put the phrase into a little more detail. The dashes are used similar to when describing a word. Such as "The tree goes on unceasingly - lemons fall and fold into earth and begin again-," see, after the dash the sentence just restates what is already said, which essentially that the the tree is losing lemons. As for diction, the speaker adds a variety of diction in the fourth stanza, but i think that is because the speaker used those words to assist the figurative language. but the overall diction of the poem is kept simple in the previous stanzas.

Under the Lemon Tree

BY MARSHA DE LA O

Not rain, but fine mist

falls from my lemon tree,

a balm of droplets in green shadow.

Six years now my mother gone to earth.

This dew, light as footsteps of the dead.

She often walked out here, craned her neck,

considered the fruit, hundreds of globes

in their leathery hides, figuring on

custard and pudding, meringue and

hollandaise.

But her plans didn't work out.

The tree goes on unceasingly—lemons fall

and fold into earth and begin again—

me, I come here as a salve against heat,

come to languish, to let the soft bursts—

essence of citrus, summer's distillate—

drift into my face and settle. Water and gold

brew in the quiet deeps at the far end

of the season. Leaves swallow the body

of light and the breath of water brims over.

My hands cup each other the way hers did.

Structure

The structure of "Under the Lemon Tree," is closed/fixed. The type of the poem is a Lyric Elegy because of the grief and reflection of a dead mother. The speaker spreads the poem to where in the second stanza, a anecdote is used in memory of her mother, and then the poem transitions into it's more Elegy side of the poem, when the speaker visits the setting of the lemon tree in order to "salve" and "languish" their stress and grief.

Symbolism

In the first stanza, the first symbol is "shadow", which represents the past. The next symbol which is in the second stanza, "dew" represents fresh start. Though, once we reach the fourth stanza all of the symbol words point towards something coming to an end (like the mother) but never being forgotten. Ex: "Lemons fall into the earth and begin again". "Fall" represents decay, death, and coming apart, while "earth" represents where life continues to thrive. Since this is the case, the speaker's mother dies, and her plans and memories are sustained with her spawn that are still alive.