The theme of this poem is given away by the title. The poem represents human heritage, more specifically the hertitage of the poet, Heather Buck. I think this poem is her way of expressing her feelings and inhibitions about her painful past and the hardships she endured as a child growing up in a world of adults.

tipping and tilting them till we achieve

These are lines 18, 19 and 20 in stanza three, I believe that when she writes 'we' she is refering to her parents and then she generalises, as if all parents and all families were like hers. I believe she is saying that her parents had a rocky marriage before she was born because she goes on to say,

"Was the child with hands outsteched to the blaze

less constrained? Taking her place

on the trampled earth floor with lambs

brought in from the cold bitter springs"

The child is herself and she's saying that when she was born she was innocent, because her hands were held out to fire which is a symbol of purity. "...less contrained?..." She uses a rhetorical question there and it says that even though she was a new born baby she was already int

"...the rhythmic clatter of treadle and shuttle

A loom is where rugs and materials for rugs are made. The way she describes it does not make Persian rug making sound very pleasurable at all. In fact she makes it sound quite painful and cold. In line 12 she uses imagery by using an onomatopoeic word (clatter) and by using treadle and shuttle. She makes the process sound painful by extensive use of alliteration in the next line. She hyperbolises the amount of pain that goes into making the rugs. All the time you must remember that these rugs are strictly metaphorical and everytime she talks about making them on the 'loom', she is talking about events or people or things that have happened in her lifetime or before, that have had an impact on her heritage. Within which she is completely confused and lost as states line 34.

blind to the woven threads and dyes,

This is obviously not to be taken literally, the persian rug represents her heritage and the intricate patterns are everything that happens or has happened in her life that has had an effect on her heritage. She uses rhyme there as well (dyes and lives) and although they are not true rhymes they flow well and they make emjambment unecessary. Also something interesting is line 4, the fact that she is blind to her heritage suggests that she knows it is there but she and others take it for granted. Throughout the poem she is constantly generalising issues that are obviously quite personal to her. As if because she had these experiances everyone else or everyone reading the poem must have had them as well.

daily we tread kaleidoscopes of colour,"

or flinched as cold fastened on fingers,

In conclusion I think that like many poems written mainly with metaphors and extended metaphors there are many different ways to interpret this poem. It depends on how the reader identifies with what the poet has written. I don't particularly like this poem, mainly because it is very negative although I am yet to find a good poem written by someone in a happy or positive state of mind. <

Some common words found in the essay are:
Heather Buck, theme poem, cold bitter, heather buck, daily tread kaleidoscopes, intricate patterns, cold bitter springs, sound happy, daily tread, personal experiances, happy positive, extended metaphor, tread kaleidoscopes,
Approximate Word count = 1393
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)