Fiffteen by William Stafford

The poem Fifteen by William Stafford, describes the ideas of a young teenager and imaginations when he sees a motorcycle at the side of the rail, It tells us of how the main character gets familiar with adulthood and starts getting mature, it gives us changes. The author in his poem describes the ideas and temptations that a fifteen year old would have, and it gives us a message of how when you are blinded of your teenage dreams, at the same time to take and decide the correct paths and decisions.

In the first stanza William Stafford stops realization. He describes a motorcycle below a bridge. The cycle is abandoned, “engine running as it lay on its side, ticking over slowly in the high grass.” To begin his poem Stafford gives us a location, “South of the Bridge on Seventeenth.” If one were to assume that we as people, traveled metaphorically in any direction I would think it to be north for example: “Up” for all different purposes. Stafford’s character is south, not necessarily heading south, but he is south in relation to the bridge. Changes are like bridges, connections between one span of life and the next. Points where the road which below is much less stable, where there aren’t miles of solid ground below. Changes are things that you have to get over. And thinking that Stafford’s age which is fifteen years, like us all, we are heading north, then he’s in for a change a bridge in the future. The motorcycle in the other hand was found “back of the willows one summer day.” Willows are beautiful flowing trees, their branches fall down and hide their trunks veiling whatever may lie at their shape from all on the other side of their barrier. Stafford’s character finds the motorcycle beyond the barriers of the willows and so we can imagine him pulling aside the waterfall of green and revealing the pefrect machine. On the other hand everything about the scene finds of a hidden truth discovered. The high grass, tall as if to hide the treasures