...Robert Frost...the Heat Wave...12sep14...

My parents returned from Vermont a week ago and brought back with them a copy of Robert Frost's Poems.  A simple paperback copy from St. Martin's Press (1971 version).  Thankfully I received a present I find enriching.  As I am sweating at my desk in the break of the historical record of heat, I came across his Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.  How it awakens the frost long forgotten otherwise.  The type of snow that silently falls, as gentle as nothing else along our hair and skin.

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.

 - 1922

As a stone, through lifeless lids, track the monotone horizon

The fire extinguished, the sun black marble

The memory lost.

The cold no different than cold flesh, covered frost

My breath no different in the air

Thoughts decay.

All to ice, the tracks undisclosed, layer upon layer,

Hardened upon itself, a clear glue

The heart last.

- 2014