The winter solstice. Shortest day. Sunset at 5:40. Christmas lights. Chill, deep silence.
Whose 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.
Many will know the rest, know that this pause in which one can almost hear the snow falling. Robert Frost wrote this in 1922, the year my mother graduated from high school. She loved Frost. Didn’t know all the levels to his poetry; didn’t have to. No one has to. Pelucid in its evocation of a human moment when even the horse wonders why a human would stop on his busy way on this darkest night when the earth is tilted farthest from the sun. (It’s the time when Christian, centuries ago, chose to mark the coming of The Light into the world, the light darkness could not possess.
But, of course, Frost’s man — probably him in that moment –had to move on. He had, as do we, promises to keep…..
19 Cent Notebook 