Windchime Summary

This poem describes the speaker’s wife trying to install a windchime. The poem opens with an image of his wife still in pajamas in the early morning “standing on the plastic ice chest”(4) struggling to reach a high crossbeam. With tools and a windchime in hand and a “nail gripped tight between her teeth” (7,8), the speaker’s wife struggles to juggle the items. The speaker then skips to after the windchime ordeal, his groggy wife with a “coffee in her hand”(13). He knows that she is disillusioned by her sleepiness after she hears the windchime make a sound that “it wasn’t making,”(16) because it was never installed. After witnessing this, the speaker states that the traditional “till death do us part,”(19) phrase is an obsolete definition of marriage. Instead, he acknowledges what he would miss about his wife if they were to part. He goes on, admiring his wife’s lovable character. The way she looked in her outfit that morning with a nail in that “little kissable mouth”(24).