(For text of Waltner-Toews's poem, see The Impossible Uprooting: Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1995.)

David Waltner-Toews's “The Impossible Uprooting” is a love poem, or, more accurately, a poem about love.  It is a refreshing interpretation of how this strong emotion interacts with us in our lives, creating bonds and memories that will never leave us.  The poem’s mood is jovial but accurate, the opening quote from Leonard Cohen stating simply, “There ain’t no cure for love.”

Toews asks his reader to question how s/he loves.  He says “Imagine this – someone you love, / out of the blue, becomes a cripple, / a love-challenged person.  Imagine love / without arms…”  He proposes other scenarios of loss -- of loved ones, loved things, or even a loved country -- and in doing so questions the nature of love when the physical aspect is suddenly taken away.  Using upon the metaphor of a crippled person, Toews links diminished physical ability with the crippling effect of losing the physical symbol of a love once felt.

In the second stanza, Toews introduces the root metaphor, which relates directly to the title of the piece.  He describes how “love is a potted plant / with roots all through you.”  There is a vast interconnection created by the love between people.  It is sometimes imperceptible, and becomes present only when one tries to “uproot” a feeling of love one once had for another person.  If you attempt to uproot just one piece of someone you loved -- perhaps the memory of “flags or a dress she / wore" -- you will feel the tension between one memory or feeling and all that has come to be associated with another person, all that has gone into creating the feeling of love.  It is not a painless process: “the pain tingles like a million tiny knives / through every nervelet of your body / even as you tug gently, gently.”  Toews ends the stanza with “There is no escape from this.”  This process is not easy, but it is necessary.

Toews then requests that the reader let go of whatever s/he holds dear, and succumb to “love’s composting / rejuvenation.”  True love has roots that grow deeper than the immediately perceptible notion of to have or have not.  Giving up a sense of control over that which you love will allow the process to come full-circle.  The things and people that you loved will find their way back to you if they are meant to. 

Love exists in memories and the projection of these memories to the future.  One’s future is tied inseparably to one’s past; one’s present is simply the current perception of both the past and the future.  Toews sees too much emphasis on the perceived responsibility of the individual to be in control of his or her emotions in past, present, and future.  He asks the reader to give up this desire for control, creating a parallelism between a necessary faith in God and a faith in the overthrowing power of love.  Faith is the necessary ingredient in both cases.  One must have an understanding that many aspects of life are unchartable and unpredictable, and that the experience of events or emotions is more importantly and uniquely human than the attempt to assign a rationalism to them.

In this poem, God is personified, first of all as feminine, and also as a gardener, plodding along through her nature and looking for an example of her budding and beautiful humanity.  The speaker realizes finally that we are “judged in the / solar system’s / final super-nova laugh not by how safely we / have hoarded and / preserved.” The complete giving over of oneself to everything one loves is essential. For another human being or for God herself, love involves letting go, falling into uncertainty, and landing safely, reborn into a world of rich emotion and ever-deepening roots.