An Epiphany through "An Epiphany" by Kooser

This was not a sudden epiphany that came to me, rather a slow and gradual realization... Our world is full of contrast and motion through states of life and death. Just like Kooser, in his poem “An Epiphany” he encounters death up-close. Brown recluse spider is considered to be the most venomous spider in continental US, and obviously Kooser is in very close proximity to it

“She ran down the gleaming white floor

of the bathtub”

or may be he was even about to step into the bathtub. It is possible that the image of the spider dragging poet’s wife’s hair along the floor of the tub, triggered one of the memories of his wife

“… a curl

she might idly have turned on a finger,

she might idly have twisted, speaking to me, ”

which might indicate that this could have been his last sigh if he got bitten by the recluse spider.

The epiphany is that Kooser sees how one’s life can be over while performing such a mundane task of visiting a washroom; plus an otherwise unnoticed world exists in the most tiniest of places.