My parents are the antithesis to what I think of as poetic. Practical and pragmatic, yes, but poetic they are most assuredly not. Growing up, everything needed to have a purpose and that purpose needed to be something that would apply to making you an adult. Which is why any attempt to delve into literature, music, or history was met with disdain at best and open derision at worse.

Which is what makes the fact that my mother gave me a compilation of Robert Frost’s work a few years back one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me. I didn’t know my mother actually read poetry, let alone liked it enough to purchase an entire book. It was one of those odd moments where the world makes a little less sense; it was also the first moment that I realized that perhaps my parents aversion to the arts was their somewhat bizarre way of protecting me from not being able to make it in the world. Although I wished they’d given me a bit more credit, I do appreciate their concern now more than I did back when I was younger.

So for today, Frost is the poet. This is one of my favorite seasonal poems; when I read it I can feel the cold, blue bite of the wind and see the impatience of the horse as it tries to figure out why we’ve stopped in the middle of the woods.  I do like winter. Of course, I’m probably only saying that because it’s still warm out. Once we get full into winter I’ll be posting poems about the beach and talking about how much I love summer.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
** ** My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
** ** He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
** ** 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.
** **