|
As my father turned the car into the drive
and we were home from our rare trip to church,
a man's voice speaking from the radio
caused us to linger there, engine running.
Just so, the voice with its calm cadences
lingered by woods where snow fell downily.
Though only eight, I thought I understood
the words to fit our snowless January,
and that the man, whose name was Robert Frost
(like rime I saw that morning on the lawn),
had died in Boston, which was far away.
Who knows where I went next, with all the woods
about the house to play in, but I recall
the chilling dullness of the winter sky
and firs so still I almost heard them breathing.
I thought it wasn't Jack, but Robert, Frost,
who made them live in such a cold repose.
Within two weeks another poet died,
her head in a cold gas oven. No poem
of hers was broadcast to my family.
Years would pass before I learned her name.
The old man in his woods, the young mother
dying with two children near-such vanity
and madness framed the choices both had made-
the way he stuck it out, the way she lost it.
I've tried to cast my lot with that old man,
but something in her fate tugs at me too.
She can't have known the cause célèbre she'd be,
wanting to leave the world for leaving her.
The world goes on despite us and our poems,
snow falling in woods, or not falling,
lights coming on in houses, lights going out,
but I feel grateful that my father stopped
the car that January day, his head
almost bowed as he left the radio on.
|
