This poem is about the wonderings of a twenty four year old granddaughter of a "mail order bride." The granddaughter is a year older than the grandmother when she was promised as a bride. The grandmother was from Korea and the groom to be was from Hawaii, "Waialua Sugar Mill". The granddaughter knows what her feelings would be if she was in that position, and is curios to know what her grandmother was thinking and feeling as she left her fathers home and walked through the streets and boarded a boat to take her to an island "whose name she only recently learned". Did her grandmother know how long this trip would be, as the granddaughter now knows the great distance between Korea and Hawaii. We know little of the man awaiting her arrival, except that he works at "Waialua Sugar Mill". Does he envision his future growing brighter as his room did "from the wings of moths migrating out of the cane stalks", as his bride to be migrates out of Korea? The granddaughter envisions her grandparents first meeting. The granddaughter, knowing the subservient role of a female in the Korean culture of her grandmothers time, questions if her grandmother 'politely untied the silk bow of her jacket' and gave herself to her husband.
I don't think the granddaughter knew her grandmother, as she would have had these questions answered. I don't sense any resentment, from the granddaughter, regarding the process of arranged marriages. She accepts that that was a custom of the time.
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