Last weekend I attended a small poetry discussion at my local library. I was likely the youngest there by twenty years, which is rarer these days as I approach my 40th year, and it was wonderful. So cozy to be surrounded by people who left their houses to talk about poems without the egos of university students. One of the poems we did not discuss because we were short on time was A Boundless Moment by Robert Frost which I’ve shared below:
A Boundless Moment
He halted in the wind, and — what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most!
’Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,’ I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
Had we but in us to assume in March
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.
March is almost here and with all the promise of spring, I cannot fault the poem’s speaker for their mistake. How often do we hold such pleasurable hopes in our hearts for fear of being thought silly or dumb, instead of speaking them out loud? I like to pause the poem here — when the dream of a Paradise-in-bloom has been spoken and made real, and sit in that space. But how to describe this moment? I think “magical” would be an easy word, but also “liminal” and “enchanted” work well. It is in that space, I think, that I prefer to keep my practice. The eventual realization that it is a young beech leaf does not spoil that brief enchanted moment. The young beech leaf, as ethereal as it is, now just has a partner in beauty and forever they are connected in my mind. It is a small and broad pleasure now to see a Paradise-in-bloom among the young wintering beeches.
And these ethereal beauties populating the winter forest are all the more rare nowadays as beech leaf disease has spread through our area. Their pale presence may be even more hope-filled than the sight of a Paradise-in-bloom in March.