Spring has finally really set in up here. The way I can tell for sure is that the only snow I can still see is way up on the side of Mt. Mansfield, and the green is working its way slowly up out of the valleys. I call that little brush of color “first green,” and it is without a doubt my favorite time of year.
Robert Frost, famous New England Poet, wrote a poem about this time of year. The funny thing is, most people don’t know it. I see this poem printed beside pictures of maples in flaming fall foliage all the time. It drives me CRAZY!
Here’s the poem:
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.
See what I mean? People see the word “gold” and think foliage. And they’re right — sugar maples turn a burning orange gold in the fall. But the trees also show a tinge of that color in the spring, too. The new leaves haven’t started producing chlorophyll yet, which is where they get their green color. Robert Frost noticed that when the leaves first appear, they’re gold, but they turn green so quickly that it seems they’re holding that hue only for an hour. Then more leaves grow, and they turn green, and that little dawn of Eden is gone into the daylight of summer. And these brief spring days, after a Vermont winter, are truly worth gold.
And here’s a photo I took yesterday of Frost’s gold:
See what I mean?
This shows it, too, across the beaver pond below our house.
So every time you read this poem now, you’ll understand what Frost means. And when you show off your knowledge, you can say you learned it on a gay erotica writer’s blog. (Sorry. I have a Master’s degree in English and it still comes through sometimes.)