Today

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2000

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Canary Cage

The canary cage represents the feeling of being trapped in the house all winter long. Winters, especially in the northern states, can feel oppressive and like they drag on forever. With heavy snow and dangerous temperatures, there is often little to do but take shelter at home in the artificial heat and light until the spring rolls around again. Having to do this can feel much like being a songbird in a cage, wishing you could fly free and sing but knowing how dangerous it is to leave your cage. Letting the bird free is a respectable move—it can fly off and enjoy the weather as much as the speaker might, but the door still being on the cage means that there is always the possibility that the bird could be caged once again. Ripping the door off its hinge means that the canary will be able to come and go as it pleases from now on, and it doesn’t need to be worried about being trapped once more. The speaker is so enamored of the freedom and joy that the spring brings that he wants all the creatures around him to also experience it. By removing the ability to close the cage, the speaker ensures that he is also no longer complicit in the entrapment of another creature. It also illustrates the speaker’s desire for the beautiful spring day to be permanent. Without the door on the cage, there will be no more dreary winters to suffer through. Note, however, that the entire poem is simply a statement to illustrate how gorgeous the day is and that none of these things have actually happened. While the speaker certainly wishes to no longer suffer through winter, they are perfectly aware that they will have to anyway.

Snow Globe

The snow globe helps to clarify the idea of the recently passed winter. To the speaker, the winter felt endless, much like the perpetual winter that exists inside the environment of a snow globe. The tiny people inside have no idea what it is like to exist outside the winter, as that winter was their entire world. The speaker imagines breaking the little people out of their enclosed wasteland, ushering them into a new world full of warmth and light. Line 17, however, states that the speaker is releasing the people into the “larger dome of blue and white,” which suggests the idea of nestled realities. Just as the little people in the snow globe paperweight know only their winter world, the speaker only wants to know about this gorgeous spring day. Noting that the spring day is just a larger dome implies that there may be an even larger dome beyond the one where spring is ecstatically embraced. This suggestion of another dome tells us that the speaker is perfectly aware that a perpetual spring is a fantasy and that the bigger reality of the rotating seasons is always looming.

Peonies

While the warmth of spring seems to be the vehicle to produce all the flowers that inspire the extreme enthusiasm in “Today,” the truth for flowers like peonies is that it’s really the chill of winter that dictates just how exuberant the blossoms will be in the spring. Botanically, the mechanism is complicated, but as far as Collins is concerned, the peonies underscore the bounty and beauty of the springtime in contrast to the dull, cold grayness of the winter. Peonies also have exceptionally short-lived blooms, and this quality informs them being symbolic of the brevity of the spring days the speaker describes in the poem. Much like the quick, violent bursts of enthusiasm for spring the speaker describes, peonies can also be seen as a violent burst of blossoms that explode in the spring only to die out again only a few days later. The brevity of their appearance makes them precious, just as the singular spring day in the poem is also precious and fleeting.