The Hill We Climb

The contrast between day and night that opens the poem represents the contrast between what America had just experienced under Trump and what Gorman believes it will now experience under President Biden. The lines “The loss we carry, / a sea we must wade” (Lines 3-4) amplify the burden placed on people by the past administration.

Gorman is writing not only at the end of the Trump administration, but also during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of great loss, suffering, and death in the world that she imagines felt like a cold, lonely night for many people. During the inauguration, Gorman, dressed in a lively yellow coat and speaking with passionate energy, presented the inauguration of a new President as a new day of warmth and light.

The conclusion of the poem plays up this idea with powerful imagery, metaphor, and repetition:

When day comes we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid,

the new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it.

If only we're brave enough to be it (Lines 105-110).

The ending imagines people emerging from the darkness, ablaze with life and