"Nothing gold can stay..."

On November 28, I wrote about my dream of Robert Frost. One of these days I'm going to make an album of my strange, funny, crazy dreams. This is the way RF looked in the dream, only he was grinning all the time, and one of the poems I like so much.











Another of my favorite poems is too long to remember all of it. It's "Directive," and it's worth reading. "Let a guide direct you,/ Who only has at heart your getting lost."
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And the last stanza of "Two Tramps in Mud Time" is a good motto to live by, if you're looking for one.

"...yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."
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I think the cruellest thing old age can do to a body is to make him forget things like this that he remembers.

Post-holiday musings

What a wonderful holiday we had yesterday! Sister Pat and niece India joined Jed and me for what Jed said was the best Thanksgiving dinner he could remember. Pat brought a delicious corn casserole that, for me, was the hit of the meal, and my sweet potato pie made by her recipe was OOOK. Jed's free-range turkey was a perfect fit for my oven, and cooked up to a gorgeous golden-brown color--and tasty? Mmm-mmm.

Jed also brought a new flat-screen TV and installed it in place of the one in the living room, which was still, to me, the "new one." (He said it was for himself, so that he doesn't have to look at lines and mysterious black boxes on the old screen; but I'm allowed to look at it, too.)

Today I sold a book (I Wonder As I Wander, Langston Hughes's autobiography), and the mailman brought me a new one (Atonement, by Ian McEwan). I've started reading Atonement, but haven't yet reached the nonboring part.

Jed went back to Atlanta this afternoon, after our sumptuous lunch on yesterday's leftovers.

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Last night I dreamed about Robert Frost. I was at one of his lectures, and was talking with him before the program. I told him I had read all of his works and memorized some of the poems. "And what have you learned?" he asked. I had a feeling he meant what great wisdom had I gathered from his works, but I just recited a couple of his poems. He gave me a well-worn little book of them, about 8 inches high by 4 wide.

Poem for Sunday

Astrometaphysical, by Robert Frost

Lord, I have loved Your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high,
Or low and stormy;

Till I have reeled and stumbled
From looking up too much,
And fallen and been humbled
To wear a crutch.

My love for every Heaven
O'er which You, Lord, have lorded,
From number One to Seven,
Should be rewarded.

It may not give me hope
That when I am translated
My scalp will in the cope
Be constellated.

But if that seems to tend
To my undue renown,
At least it ought to send
Me up, not down.