He flooded the earth, asked a man to sacrifice his promised son, instituted circumcision, strange rituals, miracles and terrifying judgments. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, David, all the prophets had difficulty understanding God’s ‘antics’.

However, hindsight is 20×20. Having the gospel now and looking back, we realize that these weren’t ‘antics’ at all. Eventually this austere parent came and explained himself. These peculiar actions of God were all carefully planned and have to do with an eternal story of love. He wrote the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).

This woman in the poem wants her mother back. She asks the God who took her to give her back. How very human! But as David said about his dead son. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”

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The other touching part is that even at a distance of fifty-plus years, the poet still yearns.

As to antic, I took it in the sense of God as something of a trickster, a player of pranks — if He could do so much, surely He could return to the poet the memory of her long-lost parent. I think we continually make the prayer in the long-lasting wake of loss.

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I’m not sure any of us were saying that the speaker was wanting God to return. At least I wasn’t. It was pretty clear that all references to God in the syntax were restrictive clauses, parentheticals directed to God, but about the mother.

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Punctuation would help make this more clear:
o antic God, return to me my mother

or rearrangement:

o antic God return my mother to me

The usage reminds me of what my mother calls “Pennsylvania Dutch”. But putting the arrangement makes sense, because she is asking not just that her mother be returned, but that a very particular age and version of her mother be returned. I think it works better than if it were rearranged:

oh antic God
return my mother
in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed
to me

or even

oh antic God
return my mother to me
in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed

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It confused me at first, because she seemed to jump from “return to me, God,” to “I remember my mother.”

I think a little context would help this poem tremendously … as in knowing more about the rest of the book and how the author writes and her own religious views.

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You’re right, it’s not impossible, but given the laws of space and time, it’s improbable. I think she’s asking God to bring back the memory of her mother, too, which is very possible. But it does come off more as a plea for the nearly impossible – to me, at least.

DRILL,

I agree that it’s kind of a stretch here. When I read the poem, I’m pulled between her addressing God in such odd ways and her talking about her mother.

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I agree, the work has a sound vitality in its imagery and language. However, I remain confused as to the interplay between the memories of the mother and the desire for the return of a long-ago God (?). It seems bifurcated in that sense to me, i.e. I am not sure of the exact tie between these two thematic elements. Is the poet asking for a long-absent God to return and bring the memories with Him?

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