If I Could

Christus Statue

Eighteen years ago, my mom received a call at 9 PM from a police officer that a relative was at the police station. This relative had been attacked at a job he was starting two hours away from us. In the middle of the night, we sped in almost half the time to the police station. My relative was highly perturbed when we arrived. After the attack, he had more difficulty, which leads me to believe he had PTSD.

On the drive home that night, I plotted a story in my mind for a new novel. I wrote it during and after school at the end of my senior year. The main characters were an orphan in a foster home and his female friend. The foster boy had been attacked by a football teammate. His friend wanted to help heal him, but she didn’t know how. The story has morphed over the years and I have yet to finish it. But I wrote a poem about how hopeless the friend felt to help her friend.

I realize that my teenage mind was processing how I felt toward my relative. I felt hopeless in helping him. I felt that only Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ fully knew his pain. Others have had similar suffering who can relate on a human level and can help. Yet only Jesus Christ understands my relative’s pain on an intimate and divine level (see Alma 7:11–13).

In general, this is for anyone who feels inadequate to help others through their pain and for those in pain.

If I could reach you, I would;
If you beseech me, I could.
If I could spare you the pain;
If you could share me your bane.

If I could free you from grief;
If you could see your belief.
If I could heal you I would;
If I could feel you, I could.

If I could save you this hour,
If I could have the right power.
If I could do all for you,
But I can’t do all for you.

Only Christ can heal your heart.
Only He can feel your part.
Only He can reach your soul.
Only he can make you whole.

For a poetical analysis, I created internal rhyme for the first two stanzas in addition to the end rhymes. The third stanza has save/have which look similar but have different vowel sounds. The next two have do on both lines. The first two lines in the final stanza have internal rhyme too. The internal rhyme emphasizes the verbs, the actions that the narrator can’t do, but what Jesus can do.

I employed anaphora, or repetition at the beginning of a phrase/sentence, for for most of the poem. I created a juxtaposition of if I could to but in line 12 and the fourth stanza initial repetition of only to emphasize Jesus’ power.

Looking at the first formant in vowels sound frequencies, I emphasized more high pitch vowels like /i/ in the beginning. The frequency changes to low vowels such as /u/ and /o/. The fourth stanza particularly has a rise and fall in the rhyming vowels. The /i/ in heel and feel change to mid-frequency vowel /a/ in heart and part. The final lines go from high frequency /i/ in he and reach to the low frequency of /o/ in soul and whole. The lower frequencies feel more soothing to my ear, so I wonder if I chose the final rhyme subconsciously to represent Jesus Christ’s healing power.