Clare Rossini’s Use of Personification in “Final Love Note”

Although the second stanza takes place in summer, the tone is not rejoicing, as one would expect after the long wait through winter.

In lines 6-10 we experience the passage of time as shown by the changing of seasons. If this allusion is taken into consideration, the speaker is saying that this lover, or tree, is her paradise. Lines 9-10 paint the image of a moon rising through the silhouette of the tree’s bare and gnarled branches. It has found a new and destructive lover: the chainsaw. The phrase “pure-green” can mean either literally the color green without contamination, or it can mean pure and inexperienced as a novice may be. Her lover’s “leaves moved /Summer-long, then suddenly caught fire”, describing how autumn leaves turn from green to the color of flame, then wither and crumble as paper does in a fire (6-7). The lines “Some nights, the heat would not leave my bed / until two or three, while I tossed and turned / in my abandonment” not only give a description of what the speaker was physically experiencing, but also give the impression of the emotional trials of someone worrying about the state of a gravely ill loved-one. “In winter [she] endured [his] silences” because the branches were bare of the leaves that normally would rustle in the wind (8). “Wooden-hearted” can mean literally that its center, or heart, is made of wood. The tone of the second half of the stanza has become lonely and longing through the use of words like “endured”, “tangled”, and “trapped”. It is apparent in the word-choice used in lines 21-23 that the speaker despises the view of the sky that has replaced the shade of her beloved tree. Although we all may not have experienced the intensity in our inanimate relationships that Rossini’s speaker did, we can all relate to her loss. The phrase “lifted garden” can mean literally a mass of plant life stretched or lifted in to the air.