what does this poem mean? "who will teach me" by Nancy Wood?

Question

Who will teach me now that my fathers
Have gone with the buffalo?
Who will tell of times I wish I knew?
Who will direct my journey
So that I will come out right?
The years are clouds which
Cover my ancestors.
Let them sleep.
I shall find my way alone.

What is the metaphor?
What are the two things that the speaker compares? in what way are they similiar and in what way are they different?

Above are our homework. The questions really don't make sense to me.
I think there is a change in the speaker's attitude towards her future. but for the rest, i'm not so sure.

Answer 1

a metaphor is a figure of speech that says one thing is another without using "like" or "as". For example, "his muscles are steel" not like steel. as the first answerer says, a metaphor here is: "The years are clouds." (not like the clouds = simile).
The speaker compares time present and time gone by when the ancestors lived. They are similar in the sense that exasperation in search for ancestors does not help much. she resolves ,"Let them sleep./ I shall find my way alone." No one to give directions. They are different in terms of time. The speaker's ancestors lived at a different period. There's an obvious temporal difference but similar spatial setting.

Answer 2

Always remember poetry is a personal experience. It doesnt have a right or wrong ans.. You will be fine as long as you can support your argument. The poet is definitely worried about her future. She is looking for guidance. Perhaps she is wondering if she is to continue in the path she used to take or to change paths.
The metaphor here is the line" The years are clouds which cover my ancestors" Here the 'years' are compared to 'clouds'. If you look at clouds, it is a thing that passes by above us. One cloud is not the same as the other. here clouds are seen as an entity that looks down from above to watch the writer's ancestor. So it has an overbearing or godlike character. What does that tell you of how the writer looks at time? Probably the writer looks at time as a constant overbearing element which watchs from above, noticing all the change. I am sure you work the difference between them now. I have copied a definition of metaphor below. Hope it helps. Poetry is to be enjoyed, dont stress over it!


In literary use, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin rhetorical trope) is defined as an indirect comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects that typically uses "is a" to join the first subjects for example: "The moon is a ghostly galleon". A metaphor is commonly confused with a simile, which compares two subjects using "like" or "as". An example of a simile: "He was as sly as a fox." In the simplest case, a metaphor takes the form: "The [first subject] is a [second subject]." More generally, a metaphor casts a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way. Thus, the first subject can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second subject are used to enhance the description of the first. This device is known for usage in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context are associated with objects and entities in a different context.

Hope that helps! enjoy!