The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
At this time of year, embroiled in the unrelenting and hopeless heat of mid-summer, I always think of Frost's poem. Indeed the flowers have grown old but still bravely put up a faded front on leggy stems while dust from the July drought tarnishes the earth. What do we "make of a diminished thing" when the promise of spring has passed? Those optimists among us will look upon this time of persecuting heat as a step toward the mellowness of autumn when colors are burnished and the sunlight is soft. Literalists will probably take this pre-fall season to clean out those diminished things and sell them in a garage sale; after all, one person's diminished thing is another person's bargain, so to speak.
I, on the other hand, see Frost's poem as a question about life. What do you do when you have more years behind you than ahead of you? What can you make of the mid-summer of life? My solution to these dilemmas is grandchildren. I had this epiphany recently while watching my little grandson play in the water sprinkler in the midst of an oppressive heat wave. To him I am not diminished at all; I am just Granny, someone who loves him unconditionally and who will patiently watch him cavort through this early spring of his life. He is not even in bloom yet; in fact, he is still a bud, full of hope and promise. As I watched him dance in the shimmering spray, I glimpsed the man he will become, a tall, handsome fellow waiting in the autumn of my life.
A good poem will do that for you--give you new ways of looking at the world!
by Robert Frost
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
At this time of year, embroiled in the unrelenting and hopeless heat of mid-summer, I always think of Frost's poem. Indeed the flowers have grown old but still bravely put up a faded front on leggy stems while dust from the July drought tarnishes the earth. What do we "make of a diminished thing" when the promise of spring has passed? Those optimists among us will look upon this time of persecuting heat as a step toward the mellowness of autumn when colors are burnished and the sunlight is soft. Literalists will probably take this pre-fall season to clean out those diminished things and sell them in a garage sale; after all, one person's diminished thing is another person's bargain, so to speak.
I, on the other hand, see Frost's poem as a question about life. What do you do when you have more years behind you than ahead of you? What can you make of the mid-summer of life? My solution to these dilemmas is grandchildren. I had this epiphany recently while watching my little grandson play in the water sprinkler in the midst of an oppressive heat wave. To him I am not diminished at all; I am just Granny, someone who loves him unconditionally and who will patiently watch him cavort through this early spring of his life. He is not even in bloom yet; in fact, he is still a bud, full of hope and promise. As I watched him dance in the shimmering spray, I glimpsed the man he will become, a tall, handsome fellow waiting in the autumn of my life.
A good poem will do that for you--give you new ways of looking at the world!
