"After Dinner" by Philip Levine

The women in the poem seems to have something lacking, as if she has or about to lose someone. Theres this sense of emptiness, or depression...the fact that she is drinking her coffee with brandy, and that she notices the silence. She seems to feel alone, and because she notices the silence, and the sounds of whispers--showing that this is indeed a new feeling for her, that she has never been alone, as if she has lost someone that was always there to remove the silence...perhaps a loss of a husband. At the end of the poem the woman then walks over to the porch there is diffenaty a sense of depression when she talks about tears and her shaking hands.