This free verse poem is split into two different emotions. The first emotion portrayed is despair. Despair is laid out in three different metaphors describing different feelings that come with it. The last lines, however, promise a reason to hope, which leads to the second emotion, hope. This directly correlates to the first three stanzas by outlining what overcomes the despair described. Each of the hopeful stanzas, in three different ways, comes back to the main theme of the poem: we can hope because we can remember.
