Speaking and Listening Keeping Orchids

... Keeping Orchids [Read Poem Out] "Keeping Orchids" is about someone who was separated from her biological mother at birth. The central character if the poem struggles to keep the memory of her meeting with her birth-mother alive. This reunion with her mother has affected her deeply, and she feels rejected and frustrated, as it appears her mother has had another child, which although this child is now dead, the mother still kept and cared for it (shown in the line, "a digital watch her daughter was wearing when she died".). The orchids the mother gave the central character could symbolize her relationship with her mother. Throughout the poem Jackie Kay compares her relationship with her mother to the orchids of the title. In line 12 she first makes this analogy between her mothers hands and the orchids when she says "...my mothers hands are all I have". This quote describes how the orchids

want to read more? →