Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday! I don’t know where the week is going…

Just poppin’ in for this week’s year of Wooden challenge!

• January: Drink deeply from good books.
• February: Make friendship a fine art.
• March: Help others.
• April: Build a shelter against a rainy day (financially).
• May: Be true to yourself.
• June: Give thanks for your blessings every day.
• July: Love.
• August: Balance.
• September: Drink deeply from good poetry.

Back in January, we began this year-long challenge with the first item from Coach Wooden’s 7-Point Creed: Drink deeply from good books. Now, in September, we are focusing on poetry because Coach Wooden had a deep love for poetry.

Last week’s challenge was to read Selected Poems of Robert Frost.

I love so many of Robert Frost’s poems — “The Road Not Taken“; “Birches“; “After Apple-Picking” to name just a few. Reading through this collection, I discovered a new-to-me poem that has become one of my new favorites. I think it fits this end-of-summer season very well, so I wanted to share it with you:

HYLA BROOK

By June our brook’s run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)–
Or flourished and come-up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat–
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

The poem’s themes of transition and the poignancy of change — echoing another poem of Frost’s I love, “Nothing gold can stay” — are a gentle reminder to enjoy the beauties and fruits of each season as they last. The brook in the poem has dried up; it is no longer a beautiful brook filled with water. Yet the speaker in the poem can remember it clearly when it had “song and speed,” and still loves the brook even though it is now nothing but “dead leaves stuck together by the heat.” I really love the ending line, which makes me think of a love that endures and sees beneath the shallow surface.

For this week’s challenge, I will be reading Good Poems, an anthology of poetry selected by Garrison Keillor. 

Next week, I’ll share my favorite poem from the collection, and I’d love to hear yours as well!

Questions for the day:

• What is your favorite poem by Robert Frost?
• Who are some of your favorite poets?