Spring Fever

Lately, I can't stop thinking about Robert Frost. He is the man responsible for my love affair with poetry. It's been years since I've picked up his poems; I've been too distracted by all the amazing contemporary work being produced these days. But Robert. Oh Robert. This time of year, my heart is especially gooey and romantic. I'm looking out the window at this moment. I see cars and our small weedy patch of grass, but somehow Spring has clouded my vision. I'm looking at the world with Frost-vision, that is to say, with Nature on my mind. I throw out the cars and gravel and zone in on the tall evergreen trees across the street, the small birds not eating the seeds we put out for them, and the rhubarb growing in giant patches on the side of the house. I am making Robert proud.

Not all poetry is about nature, but a lot of it is. What's better or more timeless and universal than nature? Our plants and animals up here in the UP may be different from yours down in the tropics, but I bet we all get the same thrill from the natural world. Even when I lived in Pittsburgh, I felt alive and energized just by walking to the park. Mr. Frost knew that nature holds all the elements of humanity. It can be wild or tame, violent or gentle, devastated or bountiful.

"A Prayer for Spring" is a poem that makes nature holy, spiritual. It is a religious poem, especially in the last stanza, but those of us who adhere to an alternate belief system can still feel the wonder and awe in "Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, / Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; / And make us happy in the happy bees, / The swarm dilating round the perfect trees." To me, it's simply hypnotic, almost ritualistic. I hear this stanza as a chant, a call to nature, and a call to humanity to witness the glory of nature. Yes, I am filling my romantic goo quota, but come on folks, I've been Frosted! You, too, can be Frosted anytime you like.