Desert Places - Robert Frost
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it-it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less-
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars-on stars where no human race is.
I have it in my so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
I love Robert Frost poetry, my compendium of his poetry is dog-eared and flagged and crunchy and stained from too much reading. I like to pick it up and leaf through it for gems that I flagged in high school and things that I might not have realized I loved. My favorite poems of his have always been the most desolate and crushing, representative of a solitude that may be voluntary but is often intense or painful.
Frost loved New England and the peace he found in the countryside... But still he understood that in that peace and silence was a nothingness so profound that it could creep inside you and breathe into you. I felt this way about the wintertime before it started to clear up, and I'm glad to see it go.
I posted this on my tumblr account but I decided it needed to go here. I don't post here nearly enough anymore.