beside the white
chickens.

You can read about the poem here.  I love this poem, because it is so subtle, so simple, and clean. Yet, given the context in which it was written, so powerful.  "The inspiration behind "The Red Wheelbarrow" came from a scene that Carlos witnessed while attending to a sick young girl in Passaic, New Jersey. Fearing for her life, Williams glanced through the window and saw the wheelbarrow and chickens". (those last sentences were directly from the linked Wikipedia site).  I read somewhere in college that said girl had just had a miscarriage, and was on the brink of death herself.
I just can't imagine being a doctor in 1923, knowing so little about the way the human body worked, despite years of medical training and to, time and time again, watch patients suffer.  It seems to me that he looked out the window and mentally clung to whatever DID make sense. 

What depends on that red wheelbarrow? His sanity, his will to continue to comfort people, his emotional well-being? I don't know.  But what I do know is that there are times in my life when things seem to be spinning out of control at a speed in which I cannot keep up with and in those times I think about this poem and try to find my wheelbarrow... God's presence in my life.  Why do I continuously try to be in control? Maybe that is really what Williams is getting at? probably not.

What got me started about William Carlos Williams? Yesterday I was listening to NPR and there was a segment on Weekend Edition that talked about apologizing for things that you really are not sorry for, as in his poem, This is just to say:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Can you imagine writing this note to a parent or a spouce after eating the plums? Totally glad that you ate the sweet cold morsels of goodness, but at the same time wanting to avoid conflict over having eaten them. I love it! So funny, and yet so true!

They had asked ahead of time for listener "copy cat" poems that sounded like this poem, apologizing for something that you knew was going to need an apology, but not really feeling actually regretful for doing... there were some that were funny and some that were sad, and it got me wanting to write my own. Nothing yet, but I'll let you know.