What perfect understanding of the earth
And all its moods and songs!
What perfect reverence for people’s worth;
For Nature’s rights and wrongs!

What perfect pitch with which to write it down:
The music of plain talk,
The silence of a wood or little town,
The wonders on a walk!

What ruggedness to dedicate a life
To basic thing like these;
To hold his poetry just like a knife
And whittle meaning from the trees!

Yes, Robert Frost has stopped and heard and said out loud
The wisdom we shall never hear within a crowd!

Copyright (2006) by Arnold Cantor.
All rights reserved.

[Written mostly July 24, 2001. Revised slightly April 18, 2002 and December 26, 2006.
This poem was inspired by Frost’s poetry and by Natalie S. Bober’s biography,
A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost, a copy of which I picked up at a yard sale
in West Kennebunk, Maine in June 2001.]