"The Lonely Sea and the Sky"

I’ve been blogging since 2004. I started slow and in recent years my posts have been even more sparse. In the middle 15 years,  however, there’s a sort of bell curve with a flurry of posts and poems and stories piling up each month. Strange as it might seem, when I come here to write, I often find myself reading my own work as if it were written by someone else. I do remember writing each post, but it's almost as if they are old letters I've found in a dusty shoebox. Reading them years after the writing is surprisingly enjoyable. There is more of a cohesive theme throughout the years than I was aware of in real time.

Something I'm doing this week made me think of a line from "Kept," written in January of 2007.  That's the poem (if you can call it that) about the old feather pillow my Grandpa Collinge gave to me. It was old when I got it, and I slept on it every night until shortly after I was married.  One line in particular came to mind because I recently came in possession of a family heirloom in need of a home. 

“… life is full of things still kept 

well past their being wanted…”

It's an old model sailboat, a cutter, my "Uncle Coop" (Claire Cooper) made during the Great Depression. (Because it has only one mast, it's a sloop not a schooner. A sloop with one mast but more than two sails is a "cutter," but I've nicknamed it "Uncle Coop's Sloop.") 

Uncle Coop and my Great Grandpa Collinge were shirt-tail relatives but mostly good friends. Both had served in the Merchant Marines. (My grandpa-great joined when he was only 13--a fact I wish I had known when I sat with him in the front room watching Arthur Godfrey) 

I've written about my great grandfather's house on the corner of Forest Street and Riverview in Port Huron. It was built in 1910. Grandpa was a plumber by then, and that house was the first in that part of town to have indoor plumbing, a fact my Grandma Spencer and my mom always stated with pride. My grandmother grew up in that house and my mother was born there in the front bedroom in 1930. So both my grandma and my mom grew up under that roof with Grandpa Collinge as the patriarch as told in "The Gray Hair in the House."  It was the security my mom knew in that house that made wonder whether she could ever re-create a sense of "home" when she got married (which was the theme of Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe. 

I say all that to say that it was in the side yard of that home where my Grandpa Collinge created a large flower garden for my great grandmother. Between that garden and the old apple tree, he made a goldfish pond that we grandkids helped him tend for many years. It was like a cement wading pool, and in that pond, Grandpa-great would sometimes bring out this wooden boat when we were feeding the fish or otherwise wading in that pool, and if we'd leave it alone--and if there was any breeze at all-- it would sail from one side to the other. At the time, we had no idea that it was thirty years old or that Uncle Coop had made it during the Great Depression, but that explains why Grandpa Collinge took it in and out of the pond himself.

Grandpa Collinge passed in the late 1971, and my Grandma and Grandpa Spencer remained in the house.  That pond required quite a bit of maintenance and for years Grandpa Collinge kept the big goldfish in a old wash tub in the basement through the winter. Well... my grandmother had no intentions of keeping up with that routine. So the same year, Grandpa Collinge died, the goldfish pond got filled in. In fact, they asked my dad to cut down the old apple tree at the same time.  

My dad gave me a piece of the apple wood, and I carved this masted ship from it. The tree was fifty-five years old at the time and this carving is now fifty-five years old. This little relic has bounced around from house to house with my family, and my grandkids play with it regularly. I'm surprised it still exists, but you'll understand why I mention it as you read on....

There are only a dozen or so folks still alive who might remember seeing this boat in that pond. To anyone else it has no meaning beyond whatever value people put on such things in musty antique shops. Even my children and grandchildren have no real connection to this boat. To them, the it is "someone else's memory," as I once said of a discarded page of photographs that blew right up to me as I was walking down our street. 

This is a corner of what we call our way-basement (its the fourth level of a tri-level that is sort of a man-cave. Otherwise, such things would never find a place in my wife's nicly decorated home. That's the boat there in the middle before I put the sails on it this week.

My wife and children know I am a notorious keeper of things "still kept well past their being wanted." I still have the actual Duncan Phyfe table from the story of that title down in our basement. The girls will have to decide what to do with that someday. This boat, however, had been in a cousin's barn for decades. He then gave it to my brother Dave who then gave it to me because he knows my basement is a family museum of sorts and that it might just turn into a poem or story. He’s right: that sometimes happens. My memories of this boat are vague and overshadowed by much fonder memories of my great grandfather who used to float this boat in his goldfish pond. Dave was correct, however, in working on the sails of this sloop, bits and pieces of nearly forgotten conversation are forming in my mind. 

I didn't know it until recently, but my Grandpa Collinge was born in Ontario, Canada. His birth name was actually Gibbs, but as a young child he was adopted into the Collinge family. I hope to learn more about  the circumstances of his youth, but I'm even more curious about why (and how) a thirteen-year-old began sailing the Great Lakes in the Merchant Marines. I only know that the experience shaped him and stayed with him all his life. He and Uncle Coop were sailing the lakes at the same time, but they met much later in our tangled up family tree. They served on different ships together, as they used to say with a laugh. The Great Lakes are actually vast freshwater seas complete wuth storms and stories of sunken ships and lost souls. So stories there were for these two men to share. I only wish I'd been there to hear them.

Neither of them ever owned a boat like the model Uncle Coop made for the goldfish pond, but making such models was a common hobby at the time. Watching the real versions of such boats on Lake Huron had become more popular in 1925, with the inaugural Port Huron to Mackinac Sailboat Race, a tradition that is still a highlight of summers in Port Huron. 

During the last several years of Grandpa Collinge's life,  he would push back from the dinner table and say, "I think I'll go down to watch the ships." It was a regular part of his evening: He'd  drive down Riverview Street, turn right at the Dunn Paper Mill, head south two blocks toward the Peerless Cement Plant and pull his car right up to the river's edge. This was back when there was still a mile of industrial shoreline from the paper mill to Pine Grove Park. The stilted ishing shacks lined the river's edge from the gravel piles of Peerless Cement to the end of Gurney Street. Each night, Grandpa Collinge would just sit there until dark or well after, staring across to the Canadian side and watching the freighters pass. 

One evening, when I was in elementary school, Grandpa Collinge took my brother Dave and I with him to sit at the river. The three of us sat in silence on the front bench seat. Then he started telling random facts about each ship. He knew them by name and could tell you what they were carrying, where they were going and where they'd been. In the pauses between passing freighters, his eyes kept staring at the passing water. eyes were seeing past them, though. Without changing his gaze, he sighed, and said something we did not believe at first:

"Boys, when I was your age, lots of the ships that passed through here looked like the old pirate ships you see in the movies. Big schooners with two or three masts and huge sails billowing out like bed sheets on the line."

"Awe. You're just kiddin' us, Grandpa." I said. "Those ships are from the olden days."

But Dave could tell he was not kidding. "You mean like the ships in Captain Courageous and Long John Silver? Passing right here?"

"That's what I mean," he nodded.

I was still gob-smacked. "Made out of wood with cannons and stuff?"

"Well... not cannons, but yes, of course, made out of wood. Huge ships lined up and waiting their turn to go down the river. The Great Lakes were the busiest waterway in the whole world back then--what with coal and iron and lumber... and this here is the choke point of the whole Great Lakes. It's like sand in an hour glass right here. It was twice as busy as it is now. because the schooners had to be towed through the river by tugboats. They'd string 'em together three and four at a time. Couldn't rely on wind to get through this treacherous current. I can still see it sometimes in my mind when I'm sitting here at night."

He pointed at the passing water as if it were a blank canvas, and his eyes looked into the distance. Then he spoke is a sort of whisper. "One by one, the tall ships just stopped coming, and it was only the steamers. That's what I was on but we were sometimes right next to masted schooners. We could hear the sails snapping in the wind."

"Were you ever on one?" Dave asked.

"Not to work on one, but yes. Sometimes in port, I'd have to run an errand to one of them. It was a whole different thing than the steel deck of  a coal burner. Even to me, it seemed like something from a book. No coal to shovel. No boiler. No pipes going everywhere below. No black smoke plumes higher than the bridge--of course, the bridge wasn't here then." [He was referring to the Blue Water Bridge to Canada."

"The bridge wasn't here?" I asked. 

"No. That didn't come until I was about fifty years old. The tall ships were all gone by then."

"When was the last one you remember?" asked Dave.

"Our Son" active use on Great lakes until 1930

I didn't see the last one, but here's how you can remember it: The last working schooner on the great lakes was the "Our Son." It sank in 1930--same year your mother was born."

Dave and I stared at him with our mouths open. To think that big sailing ships like that were still on the lakes when our mother was born seemed impossible.

"She was carrying pulp wood to a paper mill in Muskegon over in Lake Michigan when a storm took her. The Coast Guard was able to save the whole crew. It was in all the papers."

Another freighter slowly came toward us from the lake to the north. We watched it in silence until the horns blew at the bend by Pine Grove Park. "

"I didn't know that one," He said, 

"You know most of 'em" by name," I added as if to encourage him.

"There was a time, I could tell you the names of fellas I knew on them." His voice dropped off as he started the car with a sigh. 

I wish I had known then how to prompt the stories behind such sighs, but we were just kids in shock that someone we knew had seen the river full of boats from the olden days. The truth is. He had also seen horses replaced by cars. He had read about the Wright brothers before he even had a radio, and now he could see jets flying over the lake leaving lines in the sky. All that was true of his lifetime, and that one short conversation was the closest we'd come to a wealth of untold stories. 

A few years after my great grandfather died, I headed off to college. By then, I had developed an interest in poetry and writing--enough so that I eventually changed my major to Education. In an advanced poetry class I learned "Sea Fever" by John Mansfield. I sometimes say it aloud and think of how my Great Grandfather was drawn to the water each night.

This weekend, I am going to Port Huron, my hometown. I do it at least once a year, usually in the summer. We'll be staying a few days at my cousin's summer house on Lake Huron. It's right on the lake, just a few blocks from where Grandpa Collinge used to sit in his car to watch the ships. My cousin lives out west, but he and I many of our siblings who live far away have a cyclical yearning to return “home” to Port Huron, and he’s kind enough to let us stay there when it's not otherwise in use. 

My cousin doesn't know it, but I'm taking this boat with me, and I'm going to leave it there in that house on the lake. It's the one place on earth where some who visit might remember the boat and the goldfish pond and Uncle Coop and Grandpa Collinge. For those who never knew these people or the pond, perhaps a glimpse of “someone else’s memory” will be of interest through the eyes of one who saw them… like the glimpse my brother and I got of the tall masted ships that Grandpa Collinge described to us. It's possible that there isn’t a shelf or a corner in the lake house to put Uncle Coop’s Sloop. I understand, but I'm also leaving a copy of this post with it. Maybe... just maybe... he'll understand why I think it belongs closer to the lake again after all these years. 

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https://youtu.be/G_T6CaQt7EM?is=wcVqidTJSVGlvNtO

46th Wedding Anniversary

Forty-six years ago today Julie and I were married in Melvern,Kansas…in the very same little church where her parents were married 29 years before. 

It was crazy hot that summer in Kansas. Temperatures were over 110 for two weeks straight. On June 28th it was 114. Fortunately, the little church had AC, BUT… the reception was at the Peniel Church Camp building AND IT HAD NO AC—just two huge 5’ fans blowing hot air around—you know… the same way convection ovens work. Kansas women are true pioneer stock, and despite the heat, the night before the wedding the church ladies transformed that huge cement-floor gymnasium into a reception hall. There were twenty long tables and 150 folding chairs. Each table had two 14” taper-candles in glass star-shaped holders. It hardly looked like the same space where countless campers played basketball and other games for many years before and after that memorable event. 

When we entered the camp building after the wedding ceremony, the candles on the tables could not be lit. The 114 degrees had made them limp—seriously… they were not melted in the way that candles normally melt. They were just flaccid—still in their glass star bases, but each candle was otherwise lying flat against the white paper tablecloths as if they’d given up the ghost… and they had. 

We laughed but I wish we’d taken a picture of them before taking them away.  (I don’t know what we were thinking because the gigantic fans were blowing the 114 degree air around so hard the candles could not have held a flame if we had tried to light them.) 

An unexpected highlight was my friend Tim Zimmerman and his King’s Brass ensemble were playing in Kansas City that weekend and two of their members (Bob Johnson and my brother Jim) were in my wedding… so Tim and Bruce came all the way to Waverly to provide some great live music for us and our brave-hearted guests as we sat fully clothed in that sauna. Unlike most wedding reception, each guest actually lost weight by the time it was over. 

I wouldn’t change a thing about our wedding day. 

As I later wrote on a different anniversary to Julie:

“If time could somehow be reversed 

to change what might have been,

I’d choose the life that we’ve rehearsed,

and do it all again.”

This morning at breakfast, julie played “Remember when,” by Alan Jackson… In our case, the order of the first and second verse would rightly be reversed, but the looking back on 46 years, the rest of the song watered my eyes... 

I couldn’t speak.

https://youtu.be/TTA2buWlNyM?is=OG5aj8-nITV5ui8N

“The First Green Thing” an Easter poem with analysis by Dr. G.E. Mini

Today, March 21, 2026, is the first day of spring.

In 2010, I set out to write a different kind of Easter poem.  Robert Frost said, "Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom."  With that in mind, I set these thoughts in an imaginary walk in the woods, the kind I took as a boy when winter was gone and the warmer days of spring begged exploring. I was sometimes surprised by finding discarded human artifacts far off the beaten path: an old glass bottle, a bicycle seat, part of a broken teapot--odd things out of place that begged the question, "What in the world is this doing here?"  It was the memory of such walks and discoveries that prompted these lines .

"The First Green Thing"
Originally written and posted Good Friday,  April 2,  2010

The first green thing

I saw that spring

was not a hyssop sprig, 

not a trillium leaf along the trail,

nor the bourgeoning twig

of ivy on a crossed split rail.

No, before I’d seen a 

sign of things to come along the path,

I saw the green patina
of an artisan’s birdbath 
wrought in copper and bronze,
beautifully cast and crafted together 
and left to age as such responds
to air and time and weather.

It was meant for a garden, no doubt,
but was now cast off and left out
where wooded rains o'erflowed beneath
to its streaked and verdant stand.
The basin was a laurel wreath 
held high in a triumphant hand--

the base a sinnewed arm trapped
in the earth and further bound by a briar
that rose from the soil, wrapped
around the outstretched limb and higher

as if to draw the eye 

to things above and intertwine

the bowl's reflection of the sky

and laurel wreath in its thorny vine.

This overgrown and tarnished glory

seemed the preface to a story

told without a word

and forever fixed in time.
For when my curious fingers stirred
the water, I felt the stagnant slime 
hid just below the rippling blue.
And wafting from a putrid maché

of blackened leaves and acorns split in two 
came the septic stench of sewage and decay,
this the incense offered by the brazen hand

that could not feel the thorns at all

or see that they were rooted near the stand

in the cold and rotting remnants of the fall.

© Copyright 2010, TK, Patterns of Ink

Press arrow on screen to hear the poem read.

*******

If I were a sculptor, I’d like to make a birdbath like the one I depict in this poem. It would begin with a strong arm cast in bronze that rises from the ground holding a laurel wreath as if it were being placed on the head of the person looking in the water’s reflection in the basin of the birdbath.

Use of thorns: If natural thorns did not grow to ensnare my work, I would craft a vine of thorns to overtake the piece as happens in the poem so that, rather than man's praise around the onlooker's reflected head, he would see something more like a crown of thorns. 

Since ancient times, long before the time of Christ, the laurel wreath was the traditional prize for athletic victors. It was also worn by people in power like Caesar and members of the Roman Senate. Using a natural plant to make a crown was still a well-known practice in the time of Christ, which is why I think planting the crown of thorns on our Savior’s head was much more than a brutal act; it was meant to be a mockery. (As depicted in the 14th Century woodcarving below.) Little did the brutes know that the thorns, being a result and symbol of Eden's curse, only added to the full meaning of the cross. Romans 5:11-15 underscores this by connecting the sin of one man, Adam, with the reconciliation found in Christ who knew no sin yet took upon Himself the curse. "Cursed is He who hangs upon a tree." 

Just as the laurel wreath suggested honor, the crown of thorns was meant to be as shameful in meaning as it was painful to the brow, thus the poem’s imagery depicts thorns overtaking the wreath. 

Man's image of himself is one of strength, deserving the world's praise and applause (as depicted in the poem's sinewy arm raised high in victory even when bound by earth). In truth, however, fallen man is worthy--not of. praise--but of the thorns Christ wore on his behalf. 

All around we see both beauty and brokenness. We are blessed to see God's creation but cursed to know it is not as it once was. In the still water of this imaginary birdbath, for instance, we briefly see the sky, but just an inch below its reflection is the stench of rotting leaves and seeds left over from the fall. This image is very real to me.

In our backyard, we have a birdbath and other small fountains, and often in the spring when I go to clean out all the junk that fell in them before winter, there is a smell much like the smell of sewage that comes from the decay in the shallow water. By then, whatever leaves gathered there are not colorful like the ones in the picture below but blackened and matted together. Those are maple leaves, but we also have huge oaks in our yard, and the squirrels break the acorns and drop them below to mix in with all the other rotting things.

This stench is a contrast to the Old Testament practice of the incense offering. Isaiah 64:6 reminds us that whatever we "offer" to God is akin to filthy rags and fallen leaves: “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind.”

“The cold and rotting remnants of the fall,” however, is not referring to the season of autumn but rather the fall of man. As beautiful as the reflection of the sky is, as wondrous as the hope of things to come may be, there is that decay of death just below the surface; there are those thorns strangling out the glory that was meant to be. 

There lies the beauty of spring that comes with Easter. The hyssop sprigs eventually show; the trillium begin to grow, and all the beauty that was Eden surrounds us in signs of life along the path. The first green things appeared in a perfect place, Eden, and likewise the green thing I saw in the poem, though of man’s making, "was meant for a garden, no doubt, but now cast off and left out." True, it was green, but the patina that comes from the oxidation of copper and bronze is a muted hue compared to the first green things of creation. And what were some of those green things mentioned?

The hyssop is native to eastern Mediterranean lands but was purposely brought to the western continents where it now flourishes. Along with the laurel, its meaning and many uses have been known since ancient times. Psalm 51:7 says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

Hyssop is known for its cleansing power and ritual use. It is also aromatic—in the mint family. The Gospel of John says that it was on a long woody stem of hyssop that the soldier offered wine vinegar to Christ at his crucifixion when he said “I thirst.” I do not now why that detail is mentioned. It may have been additional mockery by those who had just pronounced him "King of the Jews," but regardless of the motive, the use of hyssop made a vivid link between the first Passover and the ultimate sacrificial moment in history.
.

The trillium grows across North America, it was popularly voted the state wild flower of Michigan (but Lansing overruled). It is known for its mathematical design of displaying three leaves, three sepals, and three petals, all of which have been used in Christian circles as a picture of the mystery of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—united in  purpose though distinct in personality. It is in the lily family (tri=three lily), a perennial that bursts from the ground and shows leaf each year around Easter (but typically blooms in late April and May). Sometimes called a "wake-robin," the trillium flower was used by Native Americans as an antiseptic.

Ivy is a non-deciduous evergreen plant. We typically think of Christmas trees and conifers as evergreens, but holly and ivy and many other plants remain green year-round; they do not lose their leaves in the fall and thereby show the continuity of life in spite of all that changes around them. Ivy survives the harsh winter and resumes its spreading, clinging coverage on stationary things in the spring and summer. We have some split rail fence covered in ivy in our yard, but I included it to evoke the image of hewn wood as is also true of the cross. 

Thus in the opening stanza, the brief mention of these green things—the hyssop, trillium, and ivy—(yet unseen along the path) foreshadow the significance of "the first green thing" I did see: the patina of the copper birdbath with its stench of the rotting leaves. The story may be "forever fixed in time," but it is corrected when time as we know it is no more. Ending as it does, the poem gives hope that, for those who believe, the green things foreshadowed in the beginning—cleansing hyssop, the covering ivy, and the symbolic trillium—will triumph over the remnants of THE FALL

*******

Note added in 2026 to this post from 2010.  

I have an understandable caution regarding A.I. and the creative arts and do not use A.I. in writing poems or posts here at Patterns of Ink (POI).

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—flabbergasted actually—that a poem that took hours even days to write could be so thoughtfully dissected in thirty seconds. 

Whenever I post an A.I. analysis at POI, I will playfully frame it as if provided by 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 “The First Green Thing” by Dr. G.E. Mini, Professor of Little-known Literature, Ayai University

Tom Kapanka’s “The First Green Thing” is a masterclass in the "spiritual bait-and-switch." On the surface, it reads like a contemplative nature walk; underneath, it is a visceral meditation on the theology of Good Friday and the hope of Easter. By masking a heavy theological discourse within the discovery of a discarded garden ornament, Kapanka forces the reader to confront the "septic stench" of the human condition before offering the "hyssop" of redemption.

1. The Irony of the "Green Thing"

The poem’s title and opening stanza play with the reader’s expectations of spring. In a traditional nature poem, the "first green thing" would be a sign of life—a bud or a sprout. However, Kapanka’s narrator bypasses the biological (hyssop, trillium, ivy) for the chemical: the green patina of an oxidation process.

• The Patina vs. Nature: The green of the birdbath is a "muted hue," a result of copper reacting to "air and time and weather." It is a symbol of man-made glory that is literally corroding.

• The "Not Yet": By listing the hyssop and trillium as things he hadn't seen yet, Kapanka sets a tone of anticipation. The world is still in its "Good Friday" state—cold, damp, and waiting for a resurrection that hasn't arrived.

2. The Sculpture of Human Pride

The birdbath itself is a complex allegory of the "Fall of Man." Kapanka uses the physical attributes of the bronze to map out a spiritual landscape:

• The Sinewed Arm: Represents human strength and the desire for self-exaltation. It is "held high," yet it is "trapped in the earth." This creates a powerful image of man’s dual nature: reaching for glory while being tethered to a fallen world.

• The Laurel Wreath: Historically a symbol of athletic or political victory (Caesar), here it serves as the basin. Kapanka’s notes reveal the irony: the viewer looks into the water to see themselves crowned with "man’s praise," only to have that image subverted by the encroaching briars.

• The Briars/Thorns: These are not mere garden weeds; they are the "result and symbol of Eden’s curse." They wrap around the arm and the wreath, transforming the "crown of victory" into a "crown of thorns."

3. The Sensory Reality of Sin

The poem takes a dark, almost Gothic turn in the third stanza. The "curious fingers" of the narrator stir the water, shifting the poem from a visual analysis to a sensory experience of decay.

• The Stagnant Slime: Underneath the "rippling blue" (which reflects the sky/heaven) lies the "putrid maché" of death.

• The Septic Stench: Kapanka uses the smell of rotting acorns and leaves to mirror Isaiah’s description of "filthy rags." This "incense" offered by the bronze hand is a mockery of holy offerings. It reminds the reader that beneath the surface of our "righteous deeds" and "beautifully cast" exteriors, there is the "septic" reality of sin.

• The Fall: The "cold and rotting remnants of the fall" is a clever double entendre. It refers to the literal autumn debris and the theological Fall of Adam.

4. Foreshadowing and Resolution

The poem concludes by circling back to the plants mentioned in the beginning. These are not just botanical details; they are the "antidote" to the birdbath’s decay:

While the birdbath is "forever fixed in time" and "cast off," the natural elements represent a story that is still moving toward a conclusion. The patina is a dead green, but the hyssop is a living one.

Final Thought

Kapanka suggests that we are all like that birdbath: beautifully crafted by an Artisan, yet tarnished, trapped by thorns, and filled with the "stagnant slime" of our own nature. The "First Green Thing" isn't the sign of our own improvement, but the recognition of our need for the "cleansing hyssop" that only the Easter story provides.

*******

The following is a comparative analysis between this poem and a

the "Fall of Man” as depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Comparing Tom Kapanka’s modern, tactile "The First Green Thing" with John Milton’s epic 17th-century masterpiece Paradise Lost reveals a shared obsession with the moment perfection becomes "septic." While Kapanka looks at a birdbath and Milton looks at the cosmos, both find the same "stagnant slime" at the heart of the human story.

1. The Corruption of the Garden

In both works, the garden is the stage where beauty and brokenness collide.

• Milton’s Eden: In Paradise Lost, Eden is a place of "enormous bliss." However, the moment Eve eats the fruit, Milton describes Nature itself reacting: "Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe."

• Kapanka’s Garden: Kapanka’s narrator finds a birdbath "meant for a garden... but now cast off." This mirrors the expulsion from Eden. The "septic stench" in the birdbath is the modern, localized version of Milton's universal "wound." Both authors suggest that once the "Fall" occurs, nature is no longer purely aesthetic—it is stained.

2. The Symbolism of Thorns: Victory vs. Curse

A central theme in both works is the subversion of natural beauty into a symbol of punishment.

Kapanka’s "sinewed arm" wrapped in briars is a physical manifestation of Milton's "Adam," who is now bound to a ground that no longer works for him, but against him.

3. The "Internal" Fall: Pride and Reflection

Both writers use the concept of a "reflection" to show how man views himself after losing perfection.

• The Mirror of the Water: In Kapanka’s poem, the birdbath is designed so the onlooker sees a "laurel wreath" on their reflected head. It is a trap of pride. But the narrator stirs the water and finds "stagnant slime."

• The Mirror of the Soul: In Milton, Adam and Eve’s first realization after the Fall is one of "nakedness" and shame. They no longer see the image of God in themselves, but rather their own "impurity."

• The "Sinewed Arm": Kapanka’s bronze arm represents the "brazen" pride of man—the same pride that led Milton’s Satan to rebel and Adam to disobey. Both authors emphasize that human strength is an illusion if it is "bound by a briar" to the earth.

4. The Hope of "The Second Adam"

The ultimate connection between the two is the foreshadowing of restoration.

Milton ends Paradise Lost with a "Promised Seed" who will eventually restore the "blissful Seat." Kapanka mirrors this by ending his poem with the hyssop and trillium. While the birdbath is "forever fixed in time" (representing the law and the curse), the living plants represent the "Spring that comes with Easter."

The Insight: Kapanka takes Milton’s grand, celestial theology and shrinks it down to the size of a backyard birdbath. He proves that the "septic stench of sewage and decay" is not just an ancient story—it’s something you can find in your own yard every spring.

This artisan's birdbath does not exist. The image was created
by Gemini after reading "The First Green Thing" in 2026.

Here is another Easter Poem form 2007:  "All Else"