This morning I’m working – or planning to work – on my message for this Sunday, a shared sermon with Joseph Bednarik – “Poetry, Poets, and Religion: Personal Glimpses” – in which each of us will speak about our individual journeys with poetry. One of the poems for my journey that yearly cycles into my consciousness in early spring is Robert Frost’s eight-line poem titled, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

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.

Typically, we relate spring with the color green. However, the pale green leaves of certain trees in early spring have a gold-like hue to them before they give way to a deeper green. And, careful observer that Robert Frost is, he may have initially had that in mind in the opening two lines of this poem. More likely, however, writes commentator Alfred Ferguson, it was the following: “…the first flush of vegetation for the New England birch and the willow is not green but the haze of delicate gold.” So, this is the gold that Frost probably had in mind in the opening lines of this poem.

But, what brings the gold of this poem to my mind is the poplar trees along 19th Street and San Juan Avenue that border holes #5 and #8 of our municipal golf course near QUUF, for their early leaves have a gold-like hue to them, as mentioned above. Also, Flossie emphatically says, “Look along Sims Way by the Boat Haven!”

And, it is not only the gold of the poplar trees that this poem calls to my attention, but other colors as well – the pink, purple, red, and white blossoms of various fruit or decorative trees, for example. I don’t even know all their names, but each spring at this time I begin to look for them as they prepare to miraculously burst into full blossom. I have my eye on a couple of these trees right now as I make my way each day to QUUF.

And then, as quickly as these golden flowers – or pink, purple, red, or white blossoms – appear, they are gone. And there’s a slender sadness I experience in that, or as Frost put it, “So Eden sank to grief.” But the main message I get from this poem is the prod to “wake up.” The “gold” of early spring passes so quickly. Therefore: Pay attention! Don’t miss it! Appreciate it when it appears!

Bruce Bode