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How does the poet present he mother’s thoughts and feelings about her son
leaving home to join the army?
The poet uses ambiguous language to convey the mother as being sad about her
son leaving for war
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Doves can also
be symbolic for hope and innocence, and this could be a reference to a famous story
in the Bible where a dove is sent out from Noah’s ark to find land after the flood
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The narrator also jumps in time a lot in the poem, hence the use of “later”
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There is also a sense of time escaping the narrator
in this poem, as if she feels out of control
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However, the elegant and calm movements of the
dove flying contrast this earlier description of the boy leaving in “a split second”
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Weir also uses the simile: “the world overflowing/like a treasure chest”
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This could imply that she is in fact, happy
for him
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The word “overflowing” also suggests that perhaps he has lots to learn
and that the mother shares some of her son’s excitement
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She “rounded up as many white cat hairs as I could, smoothed down your
shirt upturned collar”
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The use of lists helps the reader
to get in the mind of this mother and see how she is trying to best prepare her son
for the “overflowing” and chaotic world
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She also appears to be trying to focus on the positives as she “steeled the
softening of my face” - in other words, she is putting on a brave face, despite her
doubts
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She appears to be finding it hard to let go of the little boy she once knew

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