[Catherine Tufariello]

Waiting Up

Not home. Not home yet. Four A.M. Unknot me,
God whom I less than half believe my help.
Damp down the pounding underneath my scalp.
Unhook the gut-tight line of fear that's caught me
listening for cars, oh me of little faith.
They've seized their own lives, laughing, “Go to bed!”
And God, I hate her—hate the hag in my head
who mutters, praying through her gritted teeth,
make them come home, come home. God, shut her up.
Let me believe the thousand times they've come
home safe will make the door click one more time
and lock behind them. Free me from the trap
of thinking your ideas of safe and home
might not (my God!) be anything like mine.

[Catherine Tufariello]

This was the only sonnet I received with the tradition of the devotional sonnet behind it. The poem is in the form of a prayer, albeit an agnostic one (“oh me of little faith”), and the invocation of God in four places and in varying tones of voice unifies the poem. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there apparently are no atheists waiting up at 4:00 a.m. for the safe return of a child or children. It’s one of the poem’s strengths that it speaks to a universal, or near-universal, experience of parenthood, but one I don’t recall seeing treated in a poem before. The teenage or twentysomething children have gone out for the night, blithely telling their mother not to bother waiting up. In “seiz[ing] their own lives,” they’ve seized her with a terror she reviles herself for yielding to. Make her—the stereotype of the obsessive, insomniac mother—stop praying, she prays. The imagined clicking of the lock that will herald the children’s safe return becomes the snapping of the trap in which the mother’s mind is caught. Even if the God in whom she “less than half believes” hears and answers her, the very words of her prayer may be construed entirely differently than she intends.

In structure this sonnet is a modified Petrarchan with the octave rhymed abba cddc—common when this demanding form is adapted by an English-speaking poet. But the volta seems to me to come after line six, in the middle of the only couplet in the poem. In that sense the conventional Petrarchan structure is turned on its head. Apart from bed/head the rhymes are slant, a technique difficult to pull off in a sonnet. But I think the consonantal rhyming—unknot me/caught me, scalp/help, faith/teeth—works very well. Assonantal rhyme is still tougher to bring off, and I’m not sold on mine/time—the m and n sounds are so similar that it sounds like an attempt at full rhyme that fell short.

The most arresting moment in this sonnet for me is the one I’ve identified as the volta, when the speaker turns on herself with unexpected violence— “And God, I hate her, hate the hag in my head.” The first time I read it, for a second I took “I hate her” to mean the missing daughter. But in a reflexive maternal gesture that I immediately recognized, the speaker deflects her anger from the thoughtless children to herself. Motherhood arouses not merely love but anger of threatening intensity, and one defense against it is to throw oneself on it like a live grenade.

[Petra Norr]

God whom I less than half believe my help.

There's nothing more frustrating than finding a line right at the start of a poem that doesn't make sense. What are the words "my help" doing there? Is it something dialetical or idiomatic? If someone recognizes it can they please explain it to me?
This poem does what a lot of other sonnets in general do -- it stays on the same stomping ground. It basically says the same thing over and over. There is little or no progression in that sense. I respectfully disagee with Catherine about the volta. If there's any volta or twist at all in this sonnet, it comes in the last two lines, where the narrator is implying that God's idea of "safe and home" might unfortunately be the very thing she/he fears -- namely safe (and dead) in Heaven.

[Brian Watson]

There's a poem by Isaac Watts that begins "Our God, our help in ages past,". (There's an implied "to be" between "half believe" and "my help").

[Petra Norr]

Thank you, Brian. You might be right that "to be" is implied, but in that case it doesn't work for me. I think it shows shortcomings in writing skill and meter. Another idea is that it's something Catholic; I believe there are a lot of ways to address God and Mary in Catholicism, almost like long titles. But in that case, shouldn't "my help" be capitalized?
---
Have now Googled a bit and found "O God my help!" and similar expressions used in addressing God.

[Tim Murphy]

I like this as well as Catherine does. Childless, whenever I encounter this theme, which is rarely, and rarely so well done, I whisper There but for the grace of God go I. I breezed past my help, automatically inserting the implied to be. I too object to the slant Catherine finds objectionable, even as I applaud the others.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Though it is revised since I saw it last, I remember this one. A fine poem, I thought so then, and think so now.

I can really relate to waiting up, though it was a long time ago. First you pray that they aren't dead and when they show up you feel like whacking them till they are. Luckily, you just turn over in the bed and think, "I can get in two and a half hours sleep, before leaving for work. Thanks, God, for bringing her/him home safely."

Well writ.

[Rick Mullin]

I think this is well crafted, if somewhat timid. The anxiety itself is not confronted in the end as we are sidetraced to the nice question about N's and God's meaning of "home". It turns home, in one case, into a euphamism for the very thing that engenders fear. Nice, in a way. But it doesn't squarely step up to the torment as the poem veers toward one about N's faith in God, which he or she "half" questions right off the bat. The engagement with God, here, falls short of Tevye-esque.

[Gregory Dowling]

Beautifully done - and beautifully analysed by Catherine. Particularly liked the comment on the snapping of the trap... I can identify with this poem and the various images of obsessive fear it conjures up. And the homage-to/parody-of religious sonnets like those of Donne is especially effective.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Nothing quite lives up to the help/scalp slant. But then I am not the target audience for this one, having little of the Mother Hen gene in me.

The devotional prayer angle that Catherine points out is an interesting take.
But I would tend to agree with Petra that the sonnet 'stays on the same stomping ground' and does little turning.

Nemo