Nothing Like the Heart

 

Recent events in my life have reminded me of these lines I wrote in April,1995, upon returning home from my father's funeral. It was the deepest grief I had yet experienced. We were expecting our third child, but she was ten weeks from knowing her grandpa's touch. Stained glass is a great example of beauty in brokenness. In the 2nd stanza, if you change the spelling of panes to pains, morning to mourning, and sun to Son, you may find fuller meaning in the imagery. 

Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

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As a writer, I have an understandable aversion to Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)--especially as it pertains to the creative arts. I believe that being made in the Image of God includes the irrepressible desire to create, and the thought that this very human process can be mimicked by a non-human source is troubling. I'm told, however, that A.I. like the example below is distilled from millions of human thoughts skimmed like cream from the collelctive pool of human writing that has gathered on the internet since humans began writing there. Whether or not that is true,  it does give me some level of comfort that at the heart of A.I. there is collective human thought.  Still, let it be known I do not use A.I. in my writing process and it has played no part in any of the posts here at Patterns of Ink.  

Having said that, I recently stumbled upon "Gemini" which is what Google calls there A.I. program (similar to ChatGPT). I was curious how A.I. would analyze my "...metaphors and meaning and enless patterns of ink..." (as statted in this blog's header). I was pleasantly surprised and have decided to post the results below.  Whenever I post an A.I. analysis at POI, I will playfully frame it as a brief guest lecture by Dr.G.E. Mini (Google’s Gemini A.I.) I must admit, this professor is very observant and surprisingly open to the spiritual elements often hidden in my writings. 

Analysis of  Tom Kapanka's "Nothing like the Heart"

Presented by Dr. G.E.Mini of Ayai University

"Nothing Like the Heart" is a deeply moving poem, made even more poignant by the context of Tom Kapanka having written it the week after losing his father to a heart attack. Knowing that the poet’s father died due to the failure of a physical heart adds a layer of visceral reality to the metaphorical "breaking" of the poet’s emotional heart. Here is an analysis of the themes, imagery, and emotional progression within “Nothing like the Heart.” 

The Dual Meaning of "The Heart" The title and the refrain—“Nothing like the Heart”—carry a heavy double meaning given the circumstances. • Physical: It references the literal organ in the chest which is the seat of more than 700,000 deaths per year in the U.S.. • Metaphorical: It references the seat of emotion: love, grief, etc. Kapanka bridges the gap between the physical heart as a vessel of life and the metaphorical heart as the vessel of the soul. 

Stanza 1: Fragility and the Stained Glass Metaphor "the stained glass window of the soul." This is the poem's central image. Comparing the heart to a stained glass window is structurally perfect for a poem about grief: Beauty and Function: Stained glass is beautiful not just because of the glass itself, but because of the light that shines through it. Fragility: It is easily shattered.  The Nature of Repair: Kapanka notes that while things mend, they are "never quite the same / though all the parts make up the whole." This suggests that grief changes the landscape of a person permanently. You may put the pieces back together and function as a "whole" person again, but the cracks (the lead lines in the window) form a new pattern. You are not the person you were before the loss. 

Stanza 2: The Paradox of Brokenness "Somehow though... / through broken panes / the morning draws the sun" This stanza introduces a profound paradox often found in grief literature: We are healed through the very wounds that break us. If the window remained intact, it would still filter the light, but the broken pane allows the "morning" (a symbol of new beginnings and hope) to enter raw and unfiltered. It reaches the "darkest corner of our hope," as if HOPE is a. place of retreat that is never fully illuminated. It also suggests that only when we are broken by tragedy that we are forced to find light in places we previously neglected or kept in the dark. 

Stanza 3: Mystery and Surrender "No one knows / how in these times / He helps us play our part." The capitalization of "He" introduces a spiritual dimension. The poet admits to a lack of understanding ("No one knows"). There is no intellectual answer for the timing of unexpected loss or how we cope with sorrow, but it involves surrender to Sovereignty—an admission that we play a "part" in a larger design we cannot see. The healing process is not an act of will; it is something that is done to us and for us by a Higher Power or the passage of time. 

The Circular Ending The poem ends where it began: "All we know / from how we feel / is all things break... / but nothing like the heart." This circular structure mimics the waves of grief. Even after the realization of hope and the morning sun in the second stanza, the pain returns. The intellectual realization that "healing is begun" does not negate the visceral feeling that the heart is broken. Kapanka captures the reality that hope and heartbreak often coexist. One does not cancel out the other; the sun shines through the break, but the break remains. 

There is yet another dimension to the second stanza of the poem when read aloud. Kapanka creates a layer of "aural ambiguity" with his use of three key words (which are homophones: words that sound alike but have different meanings: 

1. Panes and Pains :  Text: "through broken panes" ...Echo: "through broken pains." The Literal Image: The "broken pane" refers to the shattered glass of the window. The Emotional Echo: When read aloud, we hear that the light comes through "broken pains." This suggests that wisdom and hope do not come from our strengths or our wholeness, but specifically through our suffering. Our "pains" strip away our defenses and allow us to see or feel things we couldn't when we were whole. 

2. Morning and Mourning Text: "the morning draws the sun"... Echo: "the mourning draws the sun.” This creates a beautiful paradox about the nature of grief.  The Literal Image suggests that he sun rises in the morning. It is a temporal marker indicating a new day. The Emotional Echo, however, suggests that mourning (the act of grieving) is usually associated with darkness, withdrawal, and night. However, if we hear that same line as "the mourning draws the sun," the poem suggests that the act of grieving itself is what attracts the light. This validates grief. It implies that we don't find hope by ignoring the grief (skipping the mourning), but rather that the mourning process itself is the mechanism that pulls "the sun" (hope/healing) into the "darkest corners of our hope." 

3. Sun and Son Text: "the morning draws the sun"...  Echo: "the morning draws the son" / "the Son" Given the context of a father's death and the religious capitalization of "He" later in the poem, this homophone carries a triple weight. • Layer 1 (Nature): The sun is the literal light illuminating the room. • Layer 2 (The Poet): The death of the father draws the son (the poet) into a new reality. The "morning" (the week after the death) pulls the son into the "darkest corner," forcing him to confront deep emotions he might have otherwise avoided. • Layer 3 (Spiritual): The poem later says, "He helps us play our part." In a Christian context (common in poems referencing the "soul"), the "Sun" is often a metaphor for the Son (Christ). 

The ambiguity of these thee words allows for a profound reading: The grief (mourning) draws the Divine (the Son) into the darkest parts of the poet's life to begin the healing. 

Why this matters ...

By deliberately using these homophones, Kapanka creates a poem that resonates on two frequencies at once: 1. The Visual Frequency: A story about a stained glass window, the morning light, and broken glass. 2. The Emotional Frequency: A story about pains, mourning, and the Son (Christ) [who Himself said in John 16:12 “Your sorrow will turn into joy…” ]

Summary: "Nothing Like the Heart" is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. By using the imagery of stained glass, Kapanka transforms a tragic event (a heart attack) into a meditation on how our "brokenness" allows new light to enter our lives. It is a gentle, sorrowful, but ultimately hopeful acknowledgment that while we may never be the "same" after a great loss, we can still be whole.