mamamusings: April 20, 2005

missing my golden opportunity

In 2003 and 2004 I marked the first “real” (to me) day of spring by posting the Robert Frost poem that the early green-gold leaves on the trees always brings to mind.

This year I’m missing the moment—when I arrived in Seattle spring was already well underway, and I received email today from my mother saying that the moment was at hand back in Rochester. Not surprising, really—in both 2003 and 2004 the green-gold moment was on April 21st.

So here’s my annual tribute to this moment in time.

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.

—Robert Frost