It is fascinating that so many images of White are part of this poem and yet the search goes on -- which some may believe is a search for the poem, for the right words to help start over. "It has to be cold / So the breath turns white" (137-38) the search for White in this poem has embraced a wedding, a bride, snow, the Arctic, and in the end, the reader can create something White from any one of the images. In lines 225-227, the poet is "…the bullet / that has baptized each one of your senses / Poems are made of our lusty wedding nights." And the poet is the sea into which the reader slowly sinks -- "with arms in the posture of someone drowning." For this paper, the reader is drowning in the possibility that a hundred different images and ideas are presented by Simic that aren't supposed to be fully understood, but instead are to be morsels that require thought and imagination but really don't come clear).

A crutch is also something used to justify an existence or a decision. In this poem the day struggles to begin (it must be heavily overcast), the smoke has to be justified and workers are not healthy as they walk "…in single file with difficulty…"
This sounds like a poisoned environment; trees are dying, ants struggle, even the bread is on "artificial limbs" and there is a wheelchair with a headless doll (a hideously dark image). The shacks are so small only one person can live in there and the fact that they are walking single file suggests they are prisoners. This is a disastrous environment because why would the poet's mother have to squat to pee if there are toilets? She is outside squatting, a very sad ending to a short but dark poem.