Unveiling

Unveiling by Linda Pastan


In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walkng beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet
to learn.


I like this poem. So the author starts off by talking of walking throught the cemetery and just looking at the graves. Then after looking at the graves the author realizes that she does not feel sorry for her family but instead she feels left out like when she was young and they were talking about grown-up stuff, things that she was not ready to learn yet. So I think that it is not her time to die just like when she was little and it was not her time to learn about some things that adults in her family were talking about. She might feel left out but she knows that it is not her turn so she has to wait. I also thought of how when someone grows up they learn things through experience and and through experience we are more ready to die and leave everything behinds us.