Welcome to the 9th Anniversary of the “Poem of the Month”.
The poem of the month returns, thankfully, from a long hiatus.
I started the Poem of the Month in January 2004 with a simple premise in mind – pick a poem that is short, easy to understand and that I’d like to share with others. It was an excellent excuse for sitting down and reading poetry at least once a month, to reflect on the meaning, share it, and in some small way connect with those I’m fortunate to call my friends and family.
2012 was notable for the scarcity of the poetry reading I did, and by extension the number of Poems of the Month that I sent out. In fact, 2012 was characterized by a lot of changes for us. Jody and I started new jobs on the same day in July (she’s still in pharmaceutical sales, I joined Amazon Web Services). While the opportunity for me to help build out AWS’s first training organization has been a great opportunity, it also came along with late hours and an seemingly endless supply of emails that required attention. The new jobs also led to missing two rituals I look forward to every year – my annual trip to Portugal, and travelling to Alabama to visit my family around Christmas. I have on more than one occasion over the last year found myself mumbling some opening lines from Wordsworth:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
But as things tend to do, the flow is eventually followed by the ebb, and a chance to return to some of the things that I love, like poetry. I hope you enjoy this month’s selection, Reluctance by Robert Frost.
I wish you all a wonderful 2013!
Robert Frost
(1874-1963)
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
