In Byrne's poem, she contrasts conscious versus unconscious thought in the human brain. In Lise Eliot's book What's Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (1999), the author examines modern research on brain development and discusses how intelligence evolves in the early stage of the human life cycle. The book also discusses the development of motor skills, emotional growth, and memory.

Byrne's poem takes the reader inside the author's thought processes. In William Faulkner's acclaimed novel As I Lay Dying (1930), readers hear the inner monologues of several members of the Bundren family as they take the body of the family's matriarch, Addie, to the town where Addie requested to be buried.

Byrne's poem describes the primitive mind as it heightens and speeds up its awareness to take in every minute detail...