Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 33-36
we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,
- We travel with the speaker and his grandmother in the ambulance. On the way, the grandmother looks out the window and watches the elm trees pass by for a while.
- The speaker cuts the sentence off at the end of the stanza and leaves us hanging—again.
- The enjambment here raises the stakes around what the grandmother will say.
- Will these be the last words promised by the title?
- What will the grandmother say about trees?
- Will she say how nice it is to see the outdoors again after being bed-ridden for so long?
- Will she give us some touching story from her childhood about how she played in the trees?
- Inquiring Shmoopers want to know. Let's hustle to the last stanza.