One gray-skied October morning, I sat outside on my back porch alone in a rare moment of solitude. I was feeling a lot of feelings, experiencing a lot of sensations, about finally being gloriously alone, and instantly missing my four children.
I looked up into that gray, wet-blanketed sky and saw to my right, a few crows.
"The crows above the forest call;
tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,"
Bits and pieces of one of my favorite poem by Robert Frost came back to me like an old friend sidling up to hold my hand. I wasn't alone in that moment. Robert Frost had known his own October mornings, good or bad, and he had feelings, too.
A smile dawned on my face as my mind was taken away from my loneliness and ushered instead into what felt like a hug. When you memorize someone's poem, you connect with that person in a profound and beautiful way. Poetry truly is a gift that keeps on giving.
I enjoy hearing my children recite poems like, "The Little Turtle" by Vachel Lindsay or "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. It's fun and delightful. But even more than that, I enjoy encountering poems that were memorized long ago, and summoning them back to this present moment. It is looking at them from a new angle, relating to them in a new way. That poem is now a part of me in a way it wasn't before.
Memorizing a poem with someone else brings an even greater fullness to the pleasure.
On a particularly pleasant, mild day in December (think: September/October weather in Oklahoma), my youngest child and I walked home from church alone together. We didn't walk in a hurry. We stopped several times to pick up and admire "nature treasures": a red leaf here, a yellow one there. We admired acorns and wildflowers, too. When his little six-year-old hands were both so full of leaves that he insisted I take home and save forever, I gently reminded him of our most recent Robert Frost poem we memorized together.
We prompted one another until we'd gotten through the whole thing, "Nothing Gold Can Stay."
If you're new to memorizing poetry, this one would be a great place to start. It's a reminder that the best things in life- the most real, the most precious- are also fleeting. It speaks to me, too, because I've never been one to take lots of pictures of my kids' childhood. Sometimes I feel the urge to do the "dutiful" parent thing, to try to preserve a moment for them and myself in the future, so that we can revisit it again. But there is also that part of me that knows this is delusional. Pictures are nice and fun to revisit, but they don't stop time, and they don't truly preserve anything- at least not the thing we really want to preserve, which is the moment. They don't slow down life by one second.
In fact, I've often noticed that the very modern (and motherly) American habit of trying to photograph everything often takes up precious time that could be spent in the act of just being present to one another, giving our full attention to that moment in real time. It dulls the gold. Resisting the urge to grab my phone makes those moments even richer and fuller, because I acknowledge that they are but momentary.
These precious moments of motherhood are both golden and fleeting. They cannot stay anymore than the sun can keep from setting. The dawn MUST "go down to day." Springtime cannot be perpetual. We must have our Summers, our Autumns, our barren and sometimes dismal Winters. Good times must give way to hard times. Nature's gold is green and it is her hardest hue to hold. She cannot hold it, but loosely. As a mother, too, I can only hold these precious moments loosely, knowing that many memories will slip my mind, will fade over time.
I think of the Virgin Mary as well. Luke 2:19 "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart."
It always reminds me to stop and silently, quietly, treasure today, with all the gifts that are given to me. In that moment, I know that what I have been given is plenty, is overflowing. I know in that moment that I'm well taken care of.
Unlike a photograph that cannot truly hold a moment in perpetuity, a memorized, well-loved poem, can offer solace and enchantment year after year, can revisit you when you least expect it, and can be an uplifting friend come to hold your hand anew.
What poems have you memorized? Are there any that you'd like to brush up on? Any poems that you have long-loved but never memorized?
Sincerely,
Natasha
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