poppies

• • Three days before armistice sunday'

  Beginning time sequence and remembrance of the dead already introducing the theme of death in the poem in which we may suggest that it is foreshadowing
• • ''Poppies had already been placed'

  Image of remembrance
• • 'Spasms of paper red'

  Imagery of poppies, using a violent verb cause symbolise the violence of war and its bloodshed in which the red of the poppies also is symbolic of.
• • 'Binding around your blazer'

  School uniform suggests innocence
• • 'Sellotape bandaged around my hand'

  She uses textile vocabulary to show how she tries to hold on to her son and help him bandage up her own heart and emotions with her hobbies as she does not want her son to feel afraid as she is a doting mother. Healing herself. Foreshadowing the boys death?
• • “I rounded up as many white cat hairs as I could, smoothed down your shirt's upturned collar”

  Motherly love as she wants her son to be smart and ready as she still views him as a kid as she looks after him.(for herself and the guy)(textile imagery)
• • “Steeled the softening of my face”

  The doting mother tries desperately to hold back the tears and emotions she faces. Weirs use of the caesuras ., convey that the mother is trying to keep herself together much like the randomness of the stanza so as to not make her son fear for what he is doing or make him worried about her.
• • 'I wanted to graze my nose'

  She wishes to treat him like a child by reminiscing about nostalgic memories. She wants to pamper him and not let him leave for war
• • “I resisted the impulse to run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair.”

  1. The fact that she “resisted the impulse” suggests that she is viewing her son as a more mature adult yet her motherly doting is still eager to be released
  2. The use of hair gel suggests that she’s casting her mind forward to an older boy now, a less childish one. he’s about to leave for battle and she wants to hold him while she still can.
  3. ‘Blackthorns’ has a religious connotation. It represents Jesus' crown of thorns – this woman believes her son is being metaphorically crucified due to battle at his age
• • 'Flattened, rolled, turned into felt”

  (She is melting into the past)(unsure) metaphor of the textile imagery suggests she is being crushed by losing her son. Conveying her love and emotions towards him.

  Felt is often used to make military caps and uniform trimmings. She finds it impossible to say a fitting goodbye.
• • “I was brave”

  Both her and her son as weir aims to convey to the readers the different methods of viewpoints of those who are affected by war. Mentally and physical
• • 'The world overflowing like a treasure chest'

  The son sees the world as a positive place. Childlike imagery conveys that she will always see her son as a child.the use of the simile emphasises the sons childishness as He is, of course, naïve and doesn’t take into account the dangers. Though the world is full of potential, he chooses to ignore other options and chooses to fight. The caesura after the word ‘chest’ highlights this dramatic decision. 
• • 'A split second'

  1. She feels that she has lost him suddenly.
  2. The ‘p’ in the adjective split is a plosive, suggesting disruption or agitation.
  3. Throughout the poem the theme of time is woven through. The start of the poem is ‘Three days before Armistice Sunday’. She refers to ‘before you left’, ‘after you’d gone’ and ‘later’. Most importantly his ‘playground voice’, that of the small boy, is always in her mind. She is constantly thinking of the past.
  4. The ‘split second’ breaks this pattern with a sudden, sharp shock when she is tugged back to the present.
• • 'Intoxicated'

  The mother feels that her son has been indoctrinated by propaganda.

  The adjective ‘intoxicated’ also shows the narrator’s son is excited at the adventures he believes he will have in the army, but also references the dangers he will experience, as being intoxicated is also dangerous.
• • “I went into your room”

  She may be feeling lonely or sorrowful that her son may be dead and is trying to remember the past in which time is constantly referenced. Feels closer to him. Some parents whose children have died can not bring themselves to touch the room of their beloved as they keep it frozen in time.
• • 'Released a song bird from it's cage.'

  1. the son is following his own passions as he heads for the army Free.
  2. The metaphor may indicate that the mother is the ‘songbird’, and she is releasing all her emotions by crying. She was clearly afraid to cry in front of her son, as she thought he might feel guilty and constrained.
  3. This can also be a metaphor for her “releasing” her son. He has been by her side, metaphorically caged, for years and now she is freeing him into the world, but sadly he might not come back. finally trying to overcome her emotional attachment
  4. caesura . = silent home
• • “dove”

  1. References the freedom the son is faced with as he is let out from his cage.
  2. The dove is a symbol of peace so this could suggest that the speaker’s son has died and passed on to a peaceful world. There is irony, however, in the fact that he died fighting.
  3. The pear tree is a symbol of long life and strength. This is again ironic, as he dies prematurely.
• • “Led me skirting the church yard walls”

  1. She is talking about the special place she shares with her son. Maybe they had a Sunday service before he went to war or else she is instinctively drawn to the churchyard and the burial ground. She is remembering him in her own way.
  2. It may also represent the belief that hope and faith will always prevail.
• • 'my stomach busy making Tucks, darts, pleats'

  These actions suggest her stomach is churning with emotion. The textile lexical field of — ‘tucks’, ‘darts’ ‘pleats’ etc. relate back to the first stanza and the literal reference to his uniform blazer. Her life involved caring for him and probably she sewed clothes for him, so this also has a metaphorical significance. Now all she has left is her painful, ‘stitched up’ stomach. words are nearly all monosyllabic with hard consonants, = small stabs of pain. ‘Hat-less’ may imply that she is unprotected from the elements, exposed to pain and mourning
• • 'Reinforcements

  1. Military imagery also infers emotional support
  2. She is left exposed by her grief to pain and the cold of a future in which she no longer has him to love. The ‘reinforcements’ are an ironic military reference.
  3. Military terms, like ‘reinforcements’, are used in a domestic context-possibly reflecting that emotional battles are fought at home as well as overseas.
• • 'Wishbone'

  References to a game in which the winner makes a wish
• • 'Dove pulled freely against the sky'

  1. Emotional weight is trying to escape.
  2.  The dove also symbolises the hope for her son but as it ‘pulled freely against the sky’, it implies that her son has passed away.
  3. An interesting observation by one reader is the juxtaposition of ‘pulled’ and ‘freely’ because the bird is still trapped, encased by its troubles, just like the mother in this story.
  4.  The dove is flying away from the memorial “Freely into the sky” almost as if it was carrying the spirits of the dead away to their final resting place. 
• • “I listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind.”

  represents the longing of the mom to recapture his ‘playground voice’, child. She can only hope to hear it ‘catching on the wind’ — a metaphor for elusiveness and fleetingness — like the spirit voice of her dead son.

  It could also show her wishing she could join her son where he is. It echoes the moment in the previous paragraph where she says: ‘and this is where it has led me’ showing she is being drawn to join him. Finally, she ends at a memorial, another reference to her possibly wanting to end her life