If I had a hammock, I'd go lie in it these mid-summer afternoons, but since I don't, I settle in a chair around 4:30, put up my feet, and sit a bit, putting aside the busy part of the day and shifting to a time that will rest my bones. I've figured out supper, maybe even done a bit of prep work. I've poured something refreshing to drink. I pick up a newly-arrived New Yorker. Or, lately, with the news heating up, I watch Chris Matthews at 5:00, even with its interruptions, everyone talking at once, and head butting stuff. But, soon enough (usually by the first commercial), what with all the partisan nonsense, political grid-lock, and posturing, I shake my head and turn it off.
(A bit of background here now.) Sometimes, realizing I haven't turned to them in quite awhile, I make a project of re-listening to my old 33 RPM records ... or re-reading my books of poems. Recently, not wanting to keep filling my head with those Beltway bashings, I got out my Robert Frost from college days, set it on the coffee table (where I'd be reminded to read it), and then went about my work. A good solid Modern Library edition, it's a sturdy little book, easy to handle, easy to flip through. As I set it down, I decided that Frost was possibly my favorite poet.
A bit later, when it was in fact time to put up my feet, I sat awhile then saw that it was 4:53, nearly top-of-the-hour Chris Matthews time. I looked at the remote control there beside me ... and I looked at my old college book there on the coffee table in front of me. Which would I choose? Voting for something meadowy, I picked up Frost and spent the rest of the afternoon amid stone walls, pasture springs, and star-like fireflies in the garden.
I've always liked Frost's common sense, his matter-of-factness, his home truths, edginess, and little surprises co-mingled with such language as "By June our brook's run out of song and speed." (1) Or "Never tell me that not one star of all/That slip from heaven at night and softly fall/Has been picked up with stones to build a wall." (2)
As I sat there, I re-read the two poems ingrained into the national psyche--Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ("Whose woods these are I think I know...") and The Road Not Taken ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."). And the only poem I still remember by heart because, after a dear friend gave me a broadside of it that she'd made in a letter-press printing class, I hung it up and so see it everyday.
Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
I also re-discovered Mowing, Mending Wall, The Oven Bird, A Time to Talk, New Hampshire, A Question, Fire and Ice. And these:
Devotion
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean--
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
Happiness Makes Up in Height For What It Lacks in Length
Oh, stormy stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view--
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn,
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.
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| A Frostian scene with its New England stone wall |
(2) A Star in a Stone-Boat
(Since Frost's poems are now in the public domain, it's okay to include them here.)
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