Poetry of Summer Days

The languor of it and the dreaming fond;
Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,
The breeze three odors brought,
And a gem-flower waved in a wand!

-- Robert Frost

Languor

Art, Life, and the Wisdom of Robert Frost

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Maybe I'm just trying way too hard?"



I love that feeling of stars aligning, when you don't know why you're doing something but it just feels right. Good things always come of those moments.

I try to remember not to force things, during those times when I'm feeling frustrated or things are moving slowly. It can be hard.

Sometimes we have to let go and let a higher power take over for a while.

"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words." - Robert Frost

Fort Nature

On Saturday morning (before this weekend's rain) I went hiking with my husband and some friends at Fort Nature Wildlife Sanctuary. I believe my favorite part of that hike is the hemlock grove you walk through, soon after crossing the electrical right-of-way. It stretches down the hillside to the shores of a pond, where the tree roots are draped in Sphagnum and the light streams into the otherwise very dim and quiet forest.

The Hemlock Grove


As often happens when working on photographs, I am reminded of Robert Frost: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep."

You can find some of Robert Frost's work on Project Gutenberg, by the way. It's well worth reading.

Love of Wilderness

You know what's a great word? Fey.

The Woods are Lovely


In the immortal words of Robert Frost...

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

Robert Frost

365 Days...

Day 24 - Woods

Into My Own

Into My Own
by Robert Frost




One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Poetry

Robert Frost is probably my favorite poet. His words evoke scenes near and dear to my heart, of nature and of life. When reading a Robert Frost poem, I can see the pictures I would take to illustrate it, as clearly as if I was standing in the scene with a camera in my hand. My goal over the next several months will be to turn these mental images into actual photographs, and to share them with you!



After Apple-picking
by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.