First Death in Nova Scotia

The poem’s title evokes mortality, with the poem engendering a sense of the uncanny. The speaker’s imagination creates a jarring scene. About the loon, the speaker says, “Since Uncle Arthur fired / a bullet into him / he hadn't said a word” (Lines 11-13). The three lines reflect the speaker’s strange logic. The loon, a bird, could never say “a word” (Line 13), yet the speaker presents the bird as articulate before and after their death. Though the bird is quiet now, its capacity for communication manifests. As the speaker notes, “He kept his own counsel” (Line 14). The bird maintains a dialogue with itself.

This sense of eeriness continues when the speaker’s mother tells the speaker, “Come and say good-bye / to your little cousin Arthur” (Lines 22-23). Presumably, the mother didn’t mean to suggest that the speaker could still talk to Arthur. However, the image of the verbal loon leaves open the possibility that the speaker and Arthur can have a verbal exchange. The speaker advances the haunting atmosphere when they bring Jack Frost to life, turning the symbolic Frost into a mortuary cosmetologist. The speaker says, “Jack Frost had dropped the brush / and left him white, forever” (Lines 39-40).