All Life is Immortal
It is the natural agenda of life to clear out the old, withering past and create a semi-new present generation. Through human constructs like poetry, stories, and legacies, the past is often preserved or even revisited. Poet Rennie McQuilkin proves that it is through nature’s cycle of rebirth that people create these constructs greater than themselves to ultimately connect and preserve the links between past and future.
In his poem, “On The Rotting of Apples,” McQuilkin uses the idea of “spirit seeds” to convey the cyclical nature of rebirth and the passing down of one’s legacy. He explores the cyclical decay and regrowth of apple seeds, as they pertain figuratively to a human’s life. All aging humans look beyond themselves
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He writes, “sit for me again...in your father’s salmon pink chair cockeyed with gratitude.” The speaker’s request to have his mom sit in the pink chair is intentionally placed in the first line of the first and last stanza. Since his mom is no longer alive, the only way to revisit the lustful past is to keep her alive through memories and constructs of her existence. The chair is personified with gratitude as it serves as the persisting memory of her mom and her passion to read. Thus, with momentos like this, “the heirloom clock, not stopped” are possible because like a cycle, the time with his mom is revisited. He continues his argument that the dead never truly die with the memory of a story; he writes, “Retell the stories, show vistas of the night: dead friends wearing jeweled masks, gaudy fingernails painted gold and pink.” Simply, the vistas, or mental views of remembered events, are cyclically revisited through constructs like her timeless stories. The story of the dead celebrating in a masquerade with sun-colored fingernails conveys that through stories, the dead are reborn with the sunrise. Each day brings back the past as long as stories are kept as memories. McQuilkin tells readers that although one cannot physically revisit the past through anything beyond memory, the stories provide “another day for you to celebrate.” The use of the word “you,” rather than “Mother” or “my love,” serves as a universal reminder to all that stories, in general, allow one to revisit and embrace the past. Ultimately, his mother’s life in time has not stopped ticking because the vista of dawn, before she died, can be relived everyday. McQuilkin aims to impart a genuine belief that like the speaker 's mother, one becomes immortal through lasting legacies and reminders of earlier