I’m often amazed and humbled by the erudition of the other members of my Parkinson’s support group. At last week’s meeting, the discussion prompted one of the members to recite from memory the last stanza of a poem by Robert Frost. I liked it so much — and the meaning seemed so perfectly aligned with our discussion — that I made a note to look up the full poem when I got home.
RELUCTANCE
— Robert Frost
Out through the fields and the woodsAnd over the walls I have wended;I have climbed the hills of viewAnd looked at the world, and descended;I have come by the highway home,And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,Save those that the oak is keepingTo ravel them one by oneAnd let them go scraping and creepingOut over the crusted snow,When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,No longer blown hither and thither;The last lone aster is gone;The flowers of the witch hazel wither;The heart is still aching to seek,But the feet question “Whither?”
Ah, when to the heart of manWas it ever less than a treasonTo go with the drift of things,To yield with a grace to reason,And bow and accept the endOf a love or a season?
Reading this poem in early December, 2011 — age 82, dealing with Parkinson’s and cancer — I find that it aptly describes what I see in my garden as winter approaches. But it also makes me consider my own “reluctance” to “bow and accept the end of a love or a season.” I, too, have “climbed the hills of view and looked at the world, and descended.” And like Frost, I’ve come home, but I’m not persuaded “it is ended.” For me, it’s not “reluctance” to accept this outcome. It’s refusal.
Here’s the line I particularly identify with:
The heart is still aching to seek,But the feet question “Wither?”
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