I have gotten a lot of questions and feedback about my poem and Katie suggested that perhaps I could write explaining what I am trying to do poetically, thematically, and theologically/philosophically. So I thought I would give a basic overview and then go line-by-line. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on word choice specifically or go word-by-word because that sounds absolutely boring to read. Given that I am not a professional poet it may become very clear I have no idea what I'm doing, but here goes.
The overall theme is the juxtaposition between what I want to be experiencing, what I am experiencing now, and the positive memory of things in the past. The goal in the overall structure was to represent my own constant confusion with my longing for God's Kingdom, the longing for the innocence of the past that was heaven like, the daily horrors of a fallen world, and the ways in which God shows me his work to remind me of the Gospel in simple and tangible ways.
“Look Daddy! I found a shiny thing!” She cries,
Hand held high, the shell sparkled in streetlight–
These opening lines are primarily to relate an actual event that prompted the inspiration for this poem but in a secondary way to represent the innocence with which children approach the world. Georgie Lynn found a brass casing for a 9mm pistol round which was fired one night on our street. We were in the den of our house and we as a family had to dive to the floor and wait until the shooting stopped. The kids were taken to the back of the house while I called the police. A few days later she found one of the casings at dusk and held it up like she had discovered a great treasure.
Far away in the salted breeze of my memories
My hope was that this line would bring to mind hazy summer days spent enjoying the sea breeze and the distance I felt from those days in that moment.
I picked shells with Mawmaw in peace and delight.
To juxtapose my feeling of distance from my own days of innocence, this line recalls my own intimate memories of those days and the feeling of safety that comes from that sense of reality.
The shells she found were of the highest caliber–
To this day she has an amazing collection of shells she has found that are beautiful and excellent specimens, but also the double-meaning of "caliber" and "shell" are an allusion to contrast in the next line.
Not nine millimeter–but just as discarded
9mm is the most common caliber of handgun and the caliber of the casings or "shells" that can be found in the gutter in front of our house. Sea shells are the "discarded" exterior of mollusks. While a true gun enthusiast knows that pistol and rifle rounds use casings whereas shells are used for shotgun and artillery rounds, I took the liberty of using the term shell to refer to the casings for artistic purposes.
From those whose soft interior was brined and
Here I'm referring to the soft mushiness of mollusks and making an allusion to the tenderness of a child's heart washed over by tears, or "brined," which throughout my poetry has been a common thematic connection between sea water and tears.
Eaten by predators here before we started.
Much in the same way that mollusks don't simply abandon their shells but rather are eaten out of their shells by predators, children don't simply grow up to shoot each other but rather sin in the world trains the sin in their hearts towards violence, eventually removing whatever was soft and kind and innocent.
I don’t want mudpies in the gutter for my kids–
This is an allusion to C.S. Lewis's section in The Weight of Glory: "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Nor shells spit out by gun fired in fear–
In my mind it is our satisfaction with mudpies in the gutter that leads to the violence we see in society and that is not what I want for my children. I want them to want something more.
But long lost memories of majestic sandcastles,
Here I wanted to move the reader's mind backwards to my own sense of innocence now gone, but also this is an idealized version because the sandcastles I built as a child were great, but majestic is an overstatement. There was a typo in the original post where it should have read "sandcastles."
Seashells, and the wiping away of every tear.
And the contrast of shells to help clarify what is being held in contrast but also the addition of wiping away tears is an allusion to the New Heaven and New Earth in Revelation 21. By slipping this in here the goal was to show the realization that what I long for is future rather than past, but things in my past are still images of what I hope is yet to come. At the end of this stanza the feeling is that I am pulled between an idealized past, a horror-filled present, and a hope for the future.
Dreams are taught through diaper changes and
I considered starting this stanza with "but" so that the reader would sense a shift in theme, but in my own life there is a jarring experience when I see something beautiful that is a current picture of the future reality that I hope for. I also used the word "dreams" rather than hope to keep the ephemeral and ethereal nature of these glimpses at the forefront but also ground them in the idea of very physical realities of love incarnate.
Breastmilk–like eucharistic bread and wine–
A lot of comments were made about this line but the allusion here is very simple–eucharistia is the Greek word from which we derive the word "eucharist." Eucharistia can be translated "thanksgiving" and is used because Jesus "gave thanks" before he broke the bread at the Last Supper and because we partake of the bread and wine to give thanks for the sacrifice of Christ. Through diaper changes and breastmilk I am reminded to give thanks for the spiritual but also the physical nature of the work of Christ through which he is making all things new.
The incorruptible nurture of a mother’s love
This is an allusion to multiple ideas in Scripture which could likely be their own essay, but they are found in Genesis 3:15-16, 1 Corinthians 15 (esp vs. 53-58), and Paul's synecdoche in 1 Timothy 2:15. The idea is that through the work of Christ and his suffering, the faithful suffering of a mother for her children is a sign of the perseverance of the faith brought to fulfillment in the final resurrection.
Is like Gospel, gulf breeze, and sunshine.
Based on the last line I wanted to draw the attention back to what makes this possible, namely the Gospel, but also to the hope of what its final realization brings through these symbols of peace, relief, and innocence.
“Your body broked down?” The curious toddler.
“Yes, I guess so.” Chuckling, my wife replies.
These two lines are to reinforce this idea that motherhood is a picture of a reality that is already accomplished but not yet realized physically by relating another Georgie Lynn story that acts as my own reminder. It's a great story that Katie does a better job of relating, but the importance to the poem is that Katie's body bears the scars and effects of giving birth to and breastfeeding 6 children and that those are not points of fear for Katie, but painful reminders of the joyful and purposeful work she is doing.
This is her body broken for you, I think quietly.
The words immediately called to mind the words of Jesus at the Last Supper and formed a picture in my mind of the way that faithful mothers join daily in the suffering of Christ by loving sacrificially so that their children might come to know God, but also in all the many other ways that Christ's body is called to sacrifice for the world. If the home is a microcosm of the world, then certainly parenting is a sacred or sacramental way that the grace of God is given and demonstrated physically and tangibly. The idea of labor pains, blood and water, and being nourished by the Body of Christ are such strong themes in the New Testament writings because they speak to the very physical nature of our resurrection through things we have a visceral connection with.
As he did for love, she daily bleeds and dies.
Again, alluding here to the synecdoche of how the faith of a mother and her sacrificial love is an embodiment of our faith and a promise of the hope yet to come.
My five year old has learned to identify gunshots
Yet here we are, back in the sad reality that is filled with my fears and without a transition again because those moments of resting in God's promises are so quickly interrupted. Sadly, a sinful world and a sinful nature results in the loss of innocence despite our best efforts.
Like I learned to know duck calls as a kid
And in my own mind I often compare the pain of my child's childhood to the pleasure of my own childhood, which is an unfair comparison but also causes a sense of displacement.
And the gutter shells we find as treasure
And the contrast here is that while my kids are unaware of the dissatisfaction they ought to feel and consider these things "treasure"–
Don’t bring quite the joy the seashells once did.
I am not satisfied and am beginning to realize that perhaps I never was.
But I trust that somewhere beyond the Jordan
Here ephemeral dreams turn to a more sturdy word–"trust"–because I am moving from imagined innocence through the painful present to a hopeful future assured in the work of Christ and demonstrated in the faithfulness of Katie. Also a reference to the idea of crossing the Jordan as an allusion to entering the Kingdom of God in fullness.
There’s a peaceful, sandy, seashelled shore
Here I intentionally chose words that are hard to say quickly, forcing the reader to slow down contemplatively because this Kingdom is hard to imagine or envision in our current reality.
Where my children will eternally build sandcastles
But in this Kingdom, innocence will be restored and our work will no longer be labor because the curse is gone.
And fears and doubts are felt no more.
And we will no longer doubt or fear–the feelings that really run throughout this poem end as the poem ends.