Sep 23, 2011 (about 4 months ago)
Ignoring copyright: Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
When I was born my parents lived in Raleigh, but within a month we moved to Salisbury NC for my dad to take a head pro job. We moved back to Raleigh right after I started kindergarten.
My family became friends with our next door neighbors while there, Leonard and Miriam. Leonard had a profound influence on me at the time, and probably had a lot to do with fueling my engineer mindset. He ran a frameshop but I remember him having a computer of sorts when nobody else did, and he taught me how to build a kite by hand. We bound two twigs together in a cross, and covered it with fabric or plastic. He also taught me how to use some sort of double sided tape goo, and roll it into a ball to make a fake booger.
I found a tape a few years ago (not sure I could find it again) that I made with Leonard. They were recordings we made of me saying things, such as reciting poems or saying tongue twisters. This was an effort to help me speak clearly. I’m not sure if he was just accelerating my speech ability at a young age, or if I had a true speech issue that he fixed before I was old enough to know. Either way, I have always had Robert Frost’s poem rattling around somewhere in the back of my brain, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.
This weekend I went to New York City to attend the Maker Faire, where my mother in law was selling origami. We stayed at my sister-in-laws house, and her boyfriend is an English professor that just finished his master’s degree in poetry. He had a couple of Robert Frost books on the shelf, and it brought up the poem again.
So, here it is, so I see it more often, and perhaps others do as well.
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert FrostWhose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.