I am writing a reflection on one of my poems for poetry class, and thought to myself, “Oh, this could be a blog post!” So here it is! ;) It is written in blank verse (which means there is no rhyme scheme, just iambic pentameter).
Drinking Iced Tea
Some honey-sun contained in mason jars
Keeps bright the golden lively dance of sun
and sings so sweet the clink of crystal ice
On glass- the hopefulness of summer days.
The cloudy shade of separation between
Close friends is in this peaceful moment far
away. Delicious sun means all the more:
We savor every sip and soak up light.
Our knees are toasting, golden hills that rise
and sit between long roads of salmon flesh
- our winter legs. Just like diadromous
road signs, they signal changes, pink to gold.
They signal changes, brave and red as fish
who struggle, die, to jump up waterfalls,
from salt to fresh, without knees, joints, or legs.
Yet here we seem from bloody journeys far,
Though we confess our hearts do bitterly
Feel changes. Even as a melty butter-sun
Drips glitter from our knees to thighs to calves
A sizzling, roasting pain of fire takes place
Perhaps one day our hearts will glitter too.
Poetry is an exploration. A lot of times when I start to write, I have no clue where I’m going. I may have a vague idea, one phrase, or just a form that I want to use, but that’s it.
That’s how it was when I started writing “Drinking Iced Tea.” I sat outside of Carter at a table near the pool with one of my best friends Mary Grace. The late afternoon sun simmered on our skin. I lifted up my jar of iced green tea and caught the sunlight in it. This was recapturing a memory for us—last semester, we’d visited her home in Birmingham, AL and drank iced tea in mason jars while watching her little sister’s soccer game. We’d caught the sun in the jars by holding them up to the sky. I said to her: “It’s sun-honey!”
The idea of sun-honey stayed with me ever since that moment, growing in my imagination as I started to draw pictures of it and write a short, rhymed story about a woman who traveled to and explored the hidden valleys and mysteries of the sun, then gathered and sold sun-honey from her journeys. The story itself never went anywhere. But that particular word-pair still holds a lot of weight to me.
The “lively dance of sun” brings instantly to my mind the writhing, flickering and temporary nature of the sun light when I hold up the jar to catch it. In my rough draft of this poem, I didn’t write lines 5 to 8 until the end, but then moved them. The word “cloudy” speaks of a separation between us and the sun, and more specifically between me and Mary Grace. She is on the nursing track at Covenant and is transferring to a different school next semester. There is a cloud—but it is “far / away.” I used enjambment here to show the distance between the cloud and “this peaceful moment.” As we savor our time and tea together, we “soak up light” with our skin, which foreshadows the next thought of the poem.
The next lines, 9 to 15, surprised me. I started to write about knees as hills, and suddenly the image of “roads of salmon” came to mind. I also remembered in the same instant that salmon migrate upstream and jump up waterfalls!
“Mary Grace, do you know what season salmon migrate upstream?”
In a moment I was on her laptop, looking at pictures of salmon and finding out all kinds of fascinating things! I found the word “diadromous” which describes the physical change that occurs as a salmon travels from salt water to fresh and vice versa. I felt so struck by the change that is so deep it affects every part of a fish, even throughout its physical body. It didn’t take long to also find that there is no season of migration—salmon are migrating at every time of year, making long voyages upstream and even jumping up waterfalls in order to go to their homes and make new life through their eggs. Many salmon die on this journey.
I am not very sentimental about animal life and fish (maybe I should care more!), so the death of fish doesn’t particularly move me. But the idea of salmon, their journeys throughout the entire year, and their physical changes all in the face of death in order to make new life resonated deeply with me. The Lord has been teaching me about what it means to be a new creation, and how death of our old selves happens before new life can come. So spiritually, I love the thought of going from “salt to fresh”, from water that cleans and heals wounds to water that refreshes and fills your thirst. Salmon jump “without knees, joints, or legs”—a feat that seems impossible, yet it happens. I see it as a work of the Holy Spirit that gives us the boost that we need to jump up waterfalls.
At the same time, I see these journeys as relating to general kinds of change in life, including what can feel like the loss of a friendship. The legs of salmon flesh “signal changes, pink to gold”, paralleling the change that happens in our skin as we tan in the sun. This thought connects me down through the end of the poem. Though “we seem from bloody journeys [of salmon] far” as we sit in the sun and drink iced tea and enjoy the pleasure of a friend’s companionship, “our hearts do bitterly feel changes”. But these changes are part of our journey, and are as beautiful as “glitter” dripping from the sun to our legs. Before our legs can be glittery, “A sizzling, roasting pain of fire takes place”—the transition between pink and gold: the redness of a sunburn. However, once the burn has faded, a glittery golden encapsulates our skin. This glitter symbolizes the new, vibrant life after the burn, after the painful journey, after the “bitterly [felt] changes.” Our hearts make journeys similar to the one made by our skin in the sunlight, or to salmon trudging bravely upriver. “Perhaps one day our hearts will glitter too.” This ending line expresses the hope I have in the midst of stormy and painful changes that God is using these changes to bring new life into my light and transform my heart into glittering gold, touched by the sun.
Like I said before, this poem surprised me more than once as it took shape. I didn’t expect to think about salmon, and I didn’t expect to think about the sun changing my skin or about my heart glittering. The word “glitter” also holds weight for me—another precious friend of mine, Emily, has told me that God teaches her through glitter. He teaches her to be fierce, unafraid, and unashamed the way that glitter is. It is amazing how one poem can have so much depth and layers of meaning.
I read a book last year called “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art” by Madeleine L’Engle that has affected me deeply. I remember in one chapter, her talking about what it means to serve a work. At first, I didn’t really understand what she meant—and I have to say that I still don’t completely understand. But she talked about how the Lord lays different works or ideas on our hearts, and in that laying He calls us to be faithful to give life to the work. I had never connected the idea of faithfulness with the idea of creation, but it is part of cultivating: not just in the cultural mandate sense, but also in the parable of the talents sense. God gives us gifts, and we aren’t supposed to bury them, but instead use them. It is hard to understand and analyze what kind of effect poetry has on the world around us or why it’s important to write it. But I would say that when God lays poems on our hearts, it is a responsibility we have to Him to explore them and bring them to life.
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