Robert Frost Already Said This. . .

Robert Frost Already Said This. . .

in unrhymed iambic pentameter,
which teachers and poets know as blank verse,
or at least in some strong, disciplined way,
a structure solid, yet transient. Like leaves,
first green in newness, hold on to their trees,
then scant weeks later, ramble off with breezes,
a gold and orange and crumbling danse macabre.
“What did Frost say?” that “Nothing gold can stay.”
Be it leaf or youth or Eden even.
His words as stark as freezing rain.  And hard
as the gravel kicked to the side of the lane
by the wooden wheels of the horse-drawn hearse.
A man is gold, a towhead as a boy.
No different, I think, when blonde turns gray.
Of a boy’s sudden death, Frost once did write,
“No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”
For me that is the most demanding thing,
we here alive turning to our affairs,
putting aside those that are gone to stay,
like heaps of leaves the wind to clear away.
So, live through winter and await the spring?
The April buds, the dewy flowers of May?
Time, the alchemist, will conjure more gold. . .
Ah well, Frost said this better anyway.
by Greg Ellstrom

(With Debt to Robert Frost and his poems, “Out, Out” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”  Also, for those who know, to Ponyboy and Johnny for bringing fame to a little verse.)