Analysis Of Gary Short's Poem Stick Figure

Gary Short’s poem Stick Figure is a deeply personal piece that speaks about going through a stage of grief after losing a loved one. The poem evokes the nothingness that one faces and the longing to make the inhuman human once more. Ultimately though, the piece conveys the emotion that makes us human and how even the two-dimensional can be made three-dimensional when the smallest bit of emotion is added.
The opening lines of the poem paint a picture of a bright forest in autumn, when the leaves are just turning red and nature is preparing for the coming of winter. However, this forest is empty. The “light in the nothingness” (line 2) is an image describing the way this person feels and the grief that now stares him in the face because of the cremation of his father. His father is now “dull cinders and grit” (line 4), something that is no longer human, and yet the author wants to look at the ashes as though they are still human. When he sees the “round

Instead he drew his father as a child would, as a stick figure, suggesting innocence and the feeling of being a lost child after the loss a parent. Once he is finished with the ashes and has completed the shape, the author wants to add something to the figure in order to give it that depth that he longs for. The depth he could give a picture or drawing if he had “a big lead pencil/ [and] grainy first-grade paper” (line 16-17). And so author decides to “give him a heart” (line 19). In order to add a heart, something stick figures are rarely given, he adds “a fallen red leaf” (line 19) to the ashes. This leaf animates and adds to that depth and the dimension, not only with its texture and color, but with the emotion that is placed behind the leaf. This leaf also ties his father to the earth where together they will fertilize the trees once winter and