Robert Kroetsch Case

Among the recurring themes of Kroetsch's writing are- exile and dispossession, isolation and escape on both the social and the psychological levels and the compulsion to narrate even in the face of language's inadequacies.

He is concerned with the creation of precise narrative voices, each one with idiosyncrasies carefully suited to the story. When the complexity of the world makes the port sad, he goes back to his frivolous days of his youth. He regards purity and innocence as the characteristics of childhood.

The poem depicts the personal feelings and emotions of the speaker. It presents he poet's philosophy of old age a d realization of the reality at hand.

He uses the symbol of a garden. The garden symbolises purity and innocence which are characteristics of childhood.

He sees a nostalgic dream about his mother. The fact that he keeps dreaming about her indicates that he might join her soon.

"Like a bad weed" is an expression the poet's mother uses all the time for him indicating that he is growing up so fast and up into a more sensible human being.

Now to him, death is no longer the "enemy" it was in his childhood, he seems to have come to terms with death.

The logical as well as emotional link between the first part of the poem (the dream) and its second part (death), which is more or less implicit, makes it a great prose-poem.