ok, ok, explanations....

As far as "Hastings", Rachel S. is dead-on! Bravo, and everyone go read her comment. :o)

"Stonington" is about elves. Well, not exactly. I wrote it more for fun than for anything else, and then when Dr. J commented on it, I decided he had it figured out fairly well. As a side note, it's pretty humorous sometimes to read the professors' comments on my work. I don't mean that disrespectfully. Occasionally they just "don't get it" (like with "Hastings"), but sometimes they find that the poem makes more sense than I ever thought it could. So "Stonington" is based on one of Fanny Howe's "essays" (*hem*). It's written in the voice of a son running to his mother and begging her to leave her writing and come outside to see the Elves. It's meant sort of to be about creativity--how creativity is hard to hold onto (the Elves are leaving quickly) and how it's too easy for creative people to get stuck in a rut (the mother is poised at her desk). So that poem isn't as grand in its meaning as "Hastings", I guess.

"Tulips" is about resurrection--at first, despair, seeking in all the wrong places for hope, and clinging desperately to the wrong kinds of hope. Then realizing that hope isn't in all the things we seek after but in the promises that God has given of rebirth, as portrayed in Creation. Towards the end there's language that I meant to echo the New Testament, about seeds being sown in dishonor and raised in glory.