I retired in May and I have a plan to do some of the many things I have wanted to do for all of my working years. So far I haven't had a great deal of success with that plan, although I have done a few things. I painted a portrait for my sister, I visited Omega, I joined a development circle, and just yesterday I began taking a couple of classes. My favorite class is on the poetry of Robert Frost. Of those of us old enough to remember the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1963, who can forget Frost squinting into the bright winter sun as he recited one of his poems? He was an institution by that time.
My class is held at the Bennington Museum in Bennington, VT - right next to the beautiful New England cemetery where Frost is buried. The first poem we studied is After Apple-Picking. Frost is depicting that state between wakefulness and sleep where the unconscious has a greater ability to reveal itself. It was written in England when Frost was in his 40's and trying to make his mark in poetry. He had thus far been unsuccessful in America. The metaphorical meaning, from my reading, is a consideration of what has been accomplished in his life so far, and what awaits in the future - the two pointed ladder is pointed toward heaven - but the sleep to come is not clearly defined.
After Apple-Picking
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
- Robert Frost
