Poetry Friday: He's Never About Just the Apples

Which is why I love Robert Frost so very much.

Last year, I posted Reluctance as I bid farewell to autumn. I said:

I really didn't get Robert Frost until I was older.

When I was in high school, I thought of him as the death poet, stopping by woods to think about that final nap, or as the rugged individualist, taking New England roads less traveled.

But as I grew up -- lived, moved, loved, worked, lost, made mistakes, grieved, hated, healed, and grew every year to love the shape and layering of words more dearly, I found that I also loved the roads Frost traveled.

Yes, Frost appeals to my middle-aged mature self.  He's keenly aware of fallen nature, desperate wants, lonely needs, steadfast love. And, as I mentioned last year, he stuns me with his talent for tackling the simplest subject and transforming it into a metaphysical wallop. 

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.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is at The Writer's Armchair.