Poem: The Gift- Li-Young Lee Analysis help!?

Question

From what i know, the poem is about the relationship between a son and his father. I think what the "gift" is, is the wisdom his father has. I also think that hes giving him the gift of transition from a child to adulthood. But what I really don't understand is, what is this death they talk about and the whole thing with his wifes hand. I'm really confused. If you could help me I'd totally appreciate it, THANKS!

The Gift

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he'd removed

the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon

you would have thought you saw a man

planting something in a boy's palm,

a silver tear, a tiny flame.

Had you followed that boy

you would have arrived here,

where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down

so carefully she feels no pain.

Watch as I lift the splinter out.

I was seven when my father

took my hand like this,

and I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

I did what a child does

when he's given something to keep.

I kissed my father.

Li-Young Lee

Answer 1

In "The Gift," Lee discusses two incidents involving the removal of a splinter from another's hand. When he describes removing a splinter from his wife's finger, he alludes to a skilled tenderness on his part: "Look how I shave her thumbnail down / so carefully she feels no pain".

When his father had removed a splinter from a younger Lee's palm, Lee responded with humble appreciation—he gave his father a kiss. Lee digresses—offering some more boastful, even humorous possible responses to having apprehended the removed splinter ("Ore Going Deep for My Heart," "Death visited here!"), and reminding the reader that it is, in fact, he who grew into the adult who removed his wife's splinter. He, by modestly giving his father a kiss, suggests that a gift has merit solely on account of its being a gift—even if that gift is a removed splinter. What ultimately matters is not that Lee had been feeling pain, but that, at the moment he kissed his father, he presently beheld a gift from him.

Lee does not act particularly humble when removing his wife's splinter, however, even though his father was a physician—because, regardless of what this occasion had meant for him in the past, he was presently with his wife, able to give her the gift of relief. Lee has grown and matured; he is able to proudly identify with his giving father, rather than prolong his past identity as a receiving, humble child. ♥