How could the poem "An Ordinary Day" by Norman MacCaig be analyzed stanza by stanza?

The poem "An Ordinary Day" by Norman MacCaig is about how we observe things on an average day. It is also about how important the mind is in the interpretation of our daily reality. For example, in the first stanza, the poet writes, "I took my mind a walk / Or my mind took me a walk." This contradiction suggests that the poet doesn't know whether the mind controls reality (for example, is he just...

The poem "An Ordinary Day" by Norman MacCaig is about how we observe things on an average day. It is also about how important the mind is in the interpretation of our daily reality. For example, in the first stanza, the poet writes, "I took my mind a walk / Or my mind took me a walk." This contradiction suggests that the poet doesn't know whether the mind controls reality (for example, is he just imagining taking a walk?) or whether reality influences the mind (for example, he goes for a walk, and then his mind responds to the walk).

In the second stanza, there is another seeming contradiction: "The light glittered on the water / Or the water glittered in the light." In other words, perhaps reality isn't so easy to define. Light glitters on water, but so does water glitter on light. Our perception of reality is influenced by the way we think of this experience. The next few stanzas present pictures from nature and reality that can be perceived in different ways. For example, "Various ducks / Shilly-shallied here and there / On the shilly-shallying water." In other words, did the ducks shilly-shally, or did the water? Later in the poem, long weeds appear to dance, and they are ignored by the shoals, and a cow wants to moo but decides not to. Again, this is about how the mind affects perception. The observer believes the cow was going to moo, but how does he know?

In the second-to-last stanza, the poet writes that his "mind observed to me / Or I to it." This contradiction asks which comes first—the mind, or the observation? The poem concludes with a final contradiction about how ordinary extraordinary things are, and how extraordinary ordinary things are. Perception plays a huge role in determining whether we think of everyday things as ordinary or extraordinary.