Summary

The speaker looks back on a memory from childhood: their mother was always strange and sad, and kept themselves at a distance from their child. Sometimes, the speaker would bring their mother flowers to try and cheer them up. The speaker’s father never allowed either his wife nor his child to go near the sea, as if he feared he would lose them. One day, the speaker found a hidden sealskin and brought it to their mother. Their mother took the skin and disappeared, leaving the speaker alone with their webbed fingers and a bereft father.

Analysis

The poem opens with a first-person retrospect: “I always wondered” (Line 1). This sets up the feeling of an internal monologue. The speaker references “she” (Line 1), although this secondary character isn’t specified; instead, the relationship is implied in the title so that the reader already has...