I Do Not Walk With Dead Poets (but actually I do)

When the world is too much with me; late and soon, I walk.

Without Wordsworth.

Despite that opening-line plagiarism.

No.

I do not walk with dead poets.

Or their sonnets.

Although I do have a tendency to love both.  

Their iambs metering through my brain at random hours.

Sparked by 'cursing my fate', stopping 'the sound of feet', or an anxiety-based fear that I may not get done what God has assigned me to do with the breaths I have left:
    
         “When in disgrace with fortune in men’s eyes…”

          “I have been one acquainted with the night…”

          “When I have fears that I may cease to be…”

And sometimes the spark is not so dire.

Just a student telling me how she cut hay over the weekend:

          “There was never a sound beside the wood but one…”

Or maybe even when my daughter, Scout, smiles at me:

          “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…”

No.

I do not walk with dead poets.

Nor do I walk with their beautiful lines.

Despite an ache to walk with Robert Frost.

And his lines.

Just once.

Just one time.

In the woods I played in as a child.

Simply to show him how the snow would bend the Evergreen boughs to the ground.

Bending low in respect to the weight of the world.

And not because someone was playing on them.

Like Birches.

No.

The boughs bend from the weight.

Just the weight.

Of the snow.

Heavy.

Not playful.

Despite its beauty.

I would also show Robert Frost (I may call him ‘Bob’ or ‘Frosty’ or ‘F-Dog’) the beauty of the logging trace leading to the old Punt Farm.

And the now empty stone foundations there.

With the hay ramp cluttered with quick-growing Poplars.

And ramping only to an imaginary barn.

The rock work still meticulous.

Measured.

Even after the years of disuse.

Still pentamic in their pattern.  

Not syllables.

But field stones. 

Iambic Penstoneameter.

Those iambs gave the Punts no choices.

No ‘Two roads’ diverging in a yellow wood.

Just one road.

Into Buckthorn.

And Pasture Pine.

Hardness.

That is what I imagined for them.

Or they would still be there, right?

Not leaving the sap buckets on the Sugar Maples.

For me to shoot out their rustiness.

When I was eleven.

Stealing my Dad’s Dad’s .22 from the barn in the back.

And the shells, too.

Tucked under the bailing twine.  

And understanding ‘hardship’ in my own, personal frame of reference.

Yes.

I would show and speak to Robert about all of those things.

Hoping he would be as moved as I am now.

Thinking back.

And wondering what words and lines to put down.

Would he have found them easier than I have?

Maybe.

Sigh.

But that will not happen.

No.  

I will not walk with Robert Frost.

Or any other dead poets.

Or their beautiful lines.

I will just walk.

Just. Walk.

For walking’s sake.

And my own.

At weird hours of the night and early morning.

To clear my head of the Buckthorn and Pasture Pine.

And the heaviness. 

And the hardness, too. 

The world being too much with me; late and soon.