I don’t remember very many poems from AP English in high school because it was a such a long time ago. But I do remember liking Robert Frost because his writing was pretty cut and dried. These three are pretty straight forward. I’m pretty sure we went over these at some point my senior year. I know I’ve read them each at least once. “Acquainted with the Night” might’ve been an essay question. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is one we might’ve done my junior year in honors’ English. And “The Road Not Taken” ... well, that one definitely applies to my situation. Hell, they all do in some way. Maybe that’s why I remembered them. Still kind of odd that I haven’t thought about them in more than 14 years, but they’re relevant at this moment. I must’ve forgotten a big chunk of something to get the synapses firing the right way.

And yeah, copying and pasting is a cop-out since I didn’t really have anything intelligent to post today but wanted to have something in this space. It’s best I skipped Wednesday in this particular journal, since apparently writing anything after having something to drink is a bad idea. Now I know why I never wrote drunk in college. God knows why I decided it would be a good idea to start now.

Yeah, I need to get my shit together. Sooner rather than later, I think. Need to find that list I wrote back in April or May about the stuff I wanted to accomplish this summer. I’ve done some of it — losing weight, eating better. Now I need to do the tougher stuff — cleaning regularly, sorting through my shit (and his now too), sticking to a budget and some other stuff I can’t remember. Can’t put it off any longer. Going through the stuff here is a pretty big part to me leaving him behind. I had a moment of self-pity when I thought about them together ... how it should still be us, not them. Then the moment passed. It keeps trying to pop back into my head, and I keep shoving it away. I guess it’s good that I can do that. So there. That was a mini-update of sorts. As if it matters.

Anyway, enjoy Robert Frost.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
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.


ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference