The Golden Man

I met the poet Robert Frost the summer I was 9 years old. I was spending the summer with my grandmother in Vermont and he lived just down the road apiece. It was the summer I discovered that I loved to read...anything and everything, but especially poetry. It was also the summer I decided that when I grew up, I would absolutely, positively be a writer.

My grandmother spent the summer reading poetry with me and having me memorize poem after poem which we would discuss during picnics in the back field. I memorized 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere' and 'O Captain, My Captain.' I memorized 'Jaberwocky. I spent hours on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, John Donne and Robert Frost. Words that I couldn't read yet, I learned to read. My favorite poem was this one by Robert Frost:

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.

I remember talking about it with my grandmother and her explaining how the seasons come and go and how when plants were budding they were yellow gold and then turned green and then gold again as they were dying in the fall. Then they'd wither away to brown. My grandmother Annie told me I was still little, still gold. I liked being gold and wasn't sure then that I wanted to grow older if it meant that I wouldn't stay golden. She told me that I'd be golden again one day when I was as old as she was.

One day I was out exploring when I came across an old man sitting in the shade of my favorite climbing tree: the one with a stone fence running beneath it, that made it easy to get to the lowest branch.

We talked a bit about the pretty day and climbing trees and then he asked me what I was doing that summer. I told him I was memorizing poetry. He asked me what my favorite poem was, and why. I told him which one was my favorite and then recited it.
As he had asked me to, I explained why and told him that he and I were both in the golden stage. He asked if I knew who he was and I said that I didn't because he hadn't told me. Well, he was Robert Frost.

That summer he came over or we all met by the tree and talked about writing. He read what I wrote and then would have me write it again. And again. And again. He said he was always rewriting his poetry. He also told me that some of his poetry was very famous and that if people saw the revised poems they might not recognize them.
But that he revised even his published works because it made him happier with the results even if no one ever saw them.

He also told me that my grandmother was right in having me learn about the great poets and writers. Read, he told me. Everyday. He told me that reading and writing go hand in hand, and if I wanted to ever become a writer then that's what I had to do. He also talked of finding the beauty in simple, everyday things: The overlooked, mundane, 'yesterday, tomorrow and today' things.

The last day I saw him, he told me that he liked my interpretation of 'Nothing Gold Can Stay.' That he liked being my 'Golden Man' which was what I'd taken to calling him. He had a deep, gravel-y voice and I loved lying back in the tall grasses listening to him recite poetry. That day he recited my favorite poem of his to me. And then recited his favorite of mine!

I never saw him again after that day. I never forgot him, even though it was many years before I realized just how special a summer it had truly been and how fortunate I had been to learn from the master!