UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

NEW SPECIMENS OLD SPECIMENS THE SCIENTIST MY LOG CONTACT ME
2002-10-24 - 9:01 p.m.

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.
�Robert Frost

AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW LIGHT

With discovery of Robert Frost�s poetry came the gift of knowing that the small can suggest the large and the large the small. From the rhymes and the gentle familiarity of �Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening� to the unrhymed, more complex, and ultimately more satisfying �Home Burial,� Frost�s poetic commentary on ordinary life transformed the way I looked at the world. This journal is, in part, a reflection of that transformation. I look at the small things �under the microscope� because Frost taught me how to see the big in the tiny.

Recently, an old friend of a poem in an unlikely place at an unlikely time rendered even one of the poems itself new again. Every spring, whether it begins in April or May around Wisconsin, starts the same way as Frost�s New England springs did. The first real sign comes when the trees begin to leaf. The leaves are not dark green as they are later in the season. Instead, they are a green gold that buds out. Not surprisingly, I recite the same poem every spring. Reciting the poem is such a spring ritual that Kat (and perhaps Day-Hay) can recite it too and she�s never read it.

�Nature�s first green is gold,� I begin and he�s right. He�s both literally and figuratively right. It�s yellowed and flower-like and brief. The poem fits. The poem is a reminder to enjoy the moment and a method of remembering not to get my hopes up too high. Yes, winter is gone but summer never quite lives up to its billing as paradise. With summer comes mosquitos but it�s hard to remember that by April or May.

So where did I encounter this poem anew and when? I opened up the comics on Sunday and there it was. I almost missed it. I don�t usually read �Garfield.� I leave that job to my Garfield-the-Cat-loving husband and daughters. One of them (I think it was Kat) pointed it out to me though. There was Garfield walking through the falling leaves and the only words accompanying the panels were the lines of �Nature�s first green is gold.�

When I�ve thought about the poem before, I�ve always thought about it from the front end. Garfield was thinking about it from the back end. I look at it forwards. He looked at it backwards. I remind myself not to get my hopes up. He looks back at the glory that was and notes it.

And then I thought about living life at full tilt. Holding back, keeping one�s hopes in check, never seems to mitigate disaster anyway. How much better to be Garfield and look back!

Thank you, Garfield, a cat I do not really care for, for presenting an old friend in a new light.


LAST YEAR: Of Wands and Wizards

LAST FIVE ENTRIES:

Having Life
Being Counted
Welcome Back, I Think
Any Takers Out There?
The Guitar

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