Alphabet

From the empty homes of the dead to the home the speaker sees from the airplane, houses appear several times in this poem. Shihab Nye uses the physical remnants of these empty homes, such as “rusted chairs” (Line 29) and “peach tree[s]” (Line 27) to emphasize that the metaphysical, not the physical, is what makes an otherwise random assortment of houses a community. While the speaker mourns the physical presence of their older friends, they realize that their greatest value was their collective memory and knowledge, which cannot be transferred to the objects they have left behind. The speaker further considers this point, remembering how the bird’s eye view from the airplane stripped their house of its meaning and transformed it into “the tiniest / ‘i’” (Lines 38 and 39). Traditionally a symbol of safety, shelter, and family, the home here is rendered small and insignificant in the face of the great loss the speaker is contemplating.

The speaker makes several references to the sky throughout the poem, opening with the image of the dead “going up / into the air” (Lines 4-5), comparing their feelings of loss to “the sky / over our whole neighborhood” (Lines 34-35), and ending on the image of themself viewing the neighborhood from “high above our street” (Line 36).