Souls and Poetry

I don't know that I can say I love poetry. I'm not one of those people who can curl up with a book of poems and just read them for a block of time. If that's what has to be true for me to say "I love poetry," then no, I don't.

But there are certain poems that I absolutely love, in the way I love some songs, in the way I love some people. A love that makes my chest feel full, like my heart is physically swelling with warmth and I'm overwhelmed with the intensity of the feeling.

It's moments like this that I am most convinced we're eternal beings. I can feel that I'm incapable of holding all that there is to feel; something inside me is spilling over into a dimension I don't have full access to yet. Poetry stretches the veil thin enough that I can know there's a Beyond, even if I can't live there yet.

As Gabe left the apartment today, we were trading versions of "I love you" and I was reminded of the sign he painted me for Christmas a few years ago. It's a picture of our souls intertwining, based on a poem I wrote about him in college where I described his soul as being green and gold. That reminded me:

"You know the Robert Frost poem about green and gold?" I asked.

He said he didn't think so.

"Nature's first green is gold?" I prompted. "Her hardest hue to hold? Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour?"

"Dang," he said, gathering keys and wallet. "You know a lot of it."

"I do," I said, just as surprised. "It's not very long. It mentions Eden later. You'd really like it."

We kissed and I had to Google the poem after he'd left.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Something Magical happens toward the end of Frost's poems. I'm only very familiar with four, and I love all of them very much, and all of them get me somewhere in their last half/last third. I don't know if it's something Frost did on purpose or if the lines I like just happen to fall in that region.

In "Nothing Gold Can Stay," it's the leaf subsiding to leaf that gets me. There's a turn there. The first four lines are about beginning...but then it's not the beginning anymore. Beginnings don't last forever. Eventually they become middles, and then eventually, they become ends.

Nothing gold can stay.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, surrounded by dishes that needed to be put into the dishwasher, I looked up "The Road Not Taken," and that one made me cry.

It was five particular lines that got lodged in my throat this time, and although they were consecutive, they weren't part of the same stanza.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

There's something so beautiful and so sad and so true there. The lines are filled with yearning and nostalgia and regret and contentment and wisdom. I don't even want to touch them with my thoughts out loud. They just make me cry, and if they make you cry too, it's in a slightly different way. I think poetry speaks to the soul, and everyone's soul is unique. No two people can love a poem in exactly the same way.

I'm so excited for the dimension where I can feel all of what poetry makes me feel.

You know what, yeah—I can say I love poetry.

~Stephanie

P.S. Here are the other two Robert Frost poems I love so much.

"Fire and Ice"
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

"Stopping by 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.