Death of a poet

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood–

I know now where I have seen these woods before. 

Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though.

It is the woods from memory. I stand at the familiar fork in the road once again, rooted to the ground. A ground littered in golden leaves.

And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black.

I have been at many crossroads in my life; and at each crossroads, I would think of these woods–with their yellow leaves caught in the sunlight. But what was once only a place in my mind is now as real as the breath rattling in my chest. The leaves are shivering on their stems in the frosty breeze. I dig my hands in my pockets. Someone has wrapped me up tight, but for the life of me I can’t remember who. I contemplate walking down the path, but I can’t move. I am so very tired. 

And then I feel it: the pull of my body. I remember–all too suddenly–that I am not in these woods. It is only a dream. But it feels so real. Disoriented, I finally manage to turn around, and gape at the scene behind me. 

My withered body, hooked to tubes and monitors, lays motionless on a hospital bed, my son and daughter grasping my hands. They are whispering to me, but I cannot hear them. I can only hear the wind in the trees. 

I take a shuddering breath. My heart beats sluggishly in my chest. Slowly, slowly, slower. 

I am numb. I cannot move. I am fixed where I stand. I see my daughter, tears glistening in her eyes, and I am gripped by fear. I cannot leave. I cannot be dying. This is the only life I’ve ever known. I cannot disappear into this dream. 

To die, to sleep—

To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

I reach out to shake myself, but I know it is too late. I can feel the shell of my body peeling off me. It starts at my feet, then up my legs. 

I am trembling now. “No, no!” I attempt to shout, but my lips won’t move. The sensation travels up my abdomen, coming for my chest. 

I shut my eyes, shake my head–I am not ready. 

I am the Master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. 

There is so much I haven’t fixed. But then a thought enters my head. A single word, really. It blooms so powerfully behind my eyes that at once I am thrust by some unearthly force back to my mortal frame. I blink upward at the fluorescent light of the hospital room. I open my dry lips, and suck in a shred of air. I glimpse my daughter’s face–her eyes wide and innocent the way they were as a child. It makes me smile. A voice as brittle as I feel breaks from my throat. By some miracle, I manage to speak the single word, as if I am duty-bound to say it: “Love.” 

My daughter squeezes my hand and smiles. I can feel the autumn wood beckoning me. The disjointed sensation at last reaches my chest. I can’t hear my heart anymore. I am floating away, like a balloon severed from its string. In a snap I am back at the crossroads, my eyes fully open for the first time in years. The numbness ebbs from my limbs, replaced by a spreading warmth. 

For a moment I stand in shock, unable to breathe. When I finally do, it is without difficulty. 

I am free. 

I fill my lungs with air, and it is not the sterile, stale air of the hospital, but the raw air of the autumn wood, singed with the smell of fires and lower notes of musky pine. I wiggle my fingers in the pockets of my leather jacket. Could it be? I glance down. My old leather jacket from my years in the Air force. I thought I lost it years ago. I take a step forward in my old boots. It is a miracle. I have not taken a step on my own in a year.

But that all seems so long ago. I am already fighting to remember why I was tired, why I was sick, why I was afraid. I turn around to assure myself. 

There is only the woods.  

I gasp aloud.

So this is it? I think. 

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns.

It is beautiful. And what an apt season for the Spirit World to choose! Autumn–the time of transition from life to death, when the changing leaves evoke within us a sense of our own metamorphosis. From green, to red, to orange, to gold. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

I turn in a slow circle, admiring it all. Every leaf glitters, tossing rainbows of light as if they are prisms dangling from a chandelier. The sky is an infinite blue through the latticework of branches and leaves above my head. It is like our earthly world, only bursting with clarity–as if the saturation were turned up too high on a photograph. 

Then without warning, I hear a voice.

Soft. My name. 

“Orson!” It calls from somewhere far away. Then again, louder. A woman’s voice. “Orson!” 

I know that voice. A voice I haven’t heard in ten years, and never thought I would hear again. My eyes well up with tears. I didn’t dare hope, because hope is such a fragile thing. 

Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul.

Her voice calls again, this time distinctly from around the bend in the road veering to the right. I have made my choice. I begin to run. 

The shock of my legs moving so easily beneath me makes me stumble. I haven’t run since my thirties. “Claudia!” I call out. 

“Orson!” 

I run through the tunnel of trees, pushing my legs harder and faster than I ever imagined possible. I should be breathless, exhausted. But I feel light as a feather. I am no longer burdened by weakness. 

“Claudia!” I shout, just as I break into an open clearing. It is a pasture. Wide, rolling and green. 

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring, I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away. 

The frost has lifted from the grass in the afternoon sunlight, and the field is sparkling. A bucolic wonderland.

“Orson!” Comes the melodic voice of my beloved. There is a hint of amusement in her voice, the way I remember years ago when she would catch me reading in my study instead of coming to dinner. She would grin, her chestnut hair curled at her cheeks, and say, ‘There is no poem better than a home-cooked meal!’ And I would answer, ‘For the body, no. But poetry is the food of the soul, my dear.’

So much of my life spent buried in books. What I wouldn’t give now for more time around our humble dinner table. 

I begin to climb the small hill, my boots scuffing the damp grass. 

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,

Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

It was one of my wife’s favorite poems. The words were the anthem of our youth. 

‘Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!’...

‘Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!’...

‘We shall go down with unreluctant tread, 

Rose-crowned into the darkness!’

Such phrases were like psalms between us, uttered like promises to embolden our headstrong souls.

I crest the hill, and look down. 

Spread below me is a vast orchard. An apple orchard. From up here on the hill, the air is chilled and thick and spiced with the smell of ripe fruit, so much so that I wish at once I could bottle it and drink it in a mug by a warm fire. 

Reverently, I descend the hill, until I am ambling through the carefully manicured rows of trees, squinting up into their branches laden with fruit.

 Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

The fruit is ripe, and some have fallen to the ground. I see a few barrels sitting at the foot of some of the trees, some filled, others halfway. Someone has been tending this orchard. 

The idea perplexes me. Is there a need for labor in Heaven? I call my wife’s name again. “Claudia!”

No one answers. Her name sails through the air and then melts with the vapors of Autumn. I put my hands on my hips and turn around, surveying the land around me. 

And then, like a cloud of mist gathering behind the trees, a figure appears. It is a man–a young man–far enough away that I cannot see him clearly. He is at work: bending down, collecting and inspecting apples before tossing them in the barrels. He wears a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. He saunters in my direction, eyes on the ground, but when he casts his eyes upward they fix on me in a way that says he already knew I was there. 

“Orson Mathers.” The young man says, greeting me with a dimpled smile. 

I offer him a wary but curious look. “Sorry, have we met before?”

The man shakes his head. “No, but I know you, and you know me.”

I frown. “How can that be?” 

“I know everyone who reads my poetry.” The young man says bashfully, angling his face away for a moment. 

When he looks up again, I study his face with newfound wonder. Those brooding eyebrows, heavy-lidded puppy dog eyes, long nose, and full lips. That swoop of perfectly quaffed hair. It is a face I have only ever seen in black and white, on the page of one of my most well-worn books of poetry. 

“R-Robert…Robert Frost?” I breathe aloud, uncertain of myself. 

He gives a curt nod.

My mouth hangs agape, unable to form words. “I am…sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

“No one is old in heaven.” He chuckles. 

I nod, and then for the first time, look down at my hands. They are smooth, pink, and young again. “No, I guess not.” I look up again. “But why are you here?”

“You always said you wanted to meet me when you died.” Frost says. “Though I can’t imagine why.”

It is an uncanny feeling–staring down one’s life-long hero. The last time I saw him was when he spoke at J.F.K’s inaugural address. He had been old then–much the way I looked a mere moment ago. Now he is young and vibrant; but his eyes glow with the wisdom of a more ancient spirit. He is in every way my intellectual superior, but standing across from him now one would think us peers. I begin to feel a love for him that surpasses all understanding. Not an admiration for his work–the way I felt on Earth–but a familial love. Something inside tells me we could be brothers. In fact, maybe we are. In this world free of all mortal confines, perhaps blood no longer defines our lineage, but the fabric of our spirits.

Frost is studying me, a knowing look in his eyes. “So you feel it now?” 

I don’t need to ask him what he is referring to. “I do.”

“Every man enters this world possessing the same knowledge he had in the first. Yet he quickly learns to let go of most of his mortal inhibitions, as they are of no use here. The fear, the anger, the hurt, the envy. The change is immediate, and can be shocking for most.” Frost says. 

I finally gather the courage to ask the question that has been pressing on my mind. “So, Mr.Frost, is this it? Is this…heaven?” 

“No, not entirely. This is the spirit world. Heaven is so much more than any of us ever imagined.” 

“Where is everyone?” I ask, looking around me again. “My wife–she was calling for me. Is she here?”

Frost cocks a hand up against the trunk of the nearest tree. “Claudia was the one who asked me to come here.”

I stop. “You’ve met Claudia?”

He smiles. “Yes, she came to me and told me all about you. How you loved my poems, how you wished to meet me. She begged me to be the one to meet you.” He shakes his head wearily. “She is very hard to say no to.”

A smile lifts the corners of my mouth at the thought of Claudia planning this. She always was a planner. It only makes sense that in the ten years since her death, she has been plotting a surprise for me. “Thank you, Mr. Frost, for meeting with me. I am honored.”

“Of course.”

For a moment, there is only silence. A solemn stillness has settled over the quiet orchard, leaving nothing but the hum of bees in the burgundy light. 

I take this chance to say the words I’ve always dreamed of saying to him. “Your poems inspired me all throughout my life, because they speak truth. They aren’t flowery, or romantic, just simple. And beautiful. They reflect on the meaning of life.”

Frost gives another nod, pursing his lips and bowing his head. “You’re very kind. You know, I always felt God in nature. I felt closer to Heaven somehow. I couldn’t explain it at the time. But I’m just glad I was right.” He turns then. “Come, follow me.”

He leads me through the rows of trees. I follow, dream-like, after him. We stop at one particular tree with a ladder laid against it. I suck in a breath. It is just like the poem, After Apple picking. Just how I imagined it. 

“I have had too much of apple picking: I am overtired–,” Frost says suddenly.

“Of the great harvest I myself desired.” We finish together, exchanging proud smiles. 

Frost sighs. “When I wrote that poem, I was tired. Tired of measuring my success and coming up short. I had to sell my farm and move my family clear across to England to get recognized as a poet. It was a gamble,” He pauses, thinking. “My family was tired. I was losing hope. But I got what I desired after much struggle. Somehow, though, it was never enough.” He gazes down at the ground, sadly. “I’ve learned something since then. Something I didn’t fully appreciate in life. You see, the apples are not missed opportunities. The apples are people.” 

I look at him, confused. “People?” 

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?” 

Frost looks up through the branches. “So much of our life is spent wondering what it should be that we lose sight of what it actually is.” He gazes at me, weighing me with his eyes. “The meaning of life…. I want to ask you, what do you think that is?”

I am struck dumb by his question. Both by the question itself and the person asking it. I would like to offer the perfect answer–the way one hopes to impress a college professor in a large lecture hall. 

I begin to study my life in my mind like the pages of a book. Turning, flipping. My childhood years. My college years. My military years. My early married years. My children’s faces. Their children’s faces. All the way up until my last moments in the hospital, looking into my daughter’s face. I think of the horrors I have witnessed. Of the tragedies. I think of the beauty I have seen. Of the miracles. 

I want to say it was a test. 

I want to say it was an adventure. 

I want to say it was a punishment. 

But something rises above it all. A single word. The only word that unites the facets of life together. A feeling that is always there. Perhaps it has always been, since the beginning of time. Because it is more than a feeling. It is a power. 

“Love.” I say in a quavering voice. Tears wet my cheeks. I feel the conviction burning in my chest. 

Frost only nods his approval. “People.” He says again, in an urgent voice. “The only thing we take with us to heaven. The true harvest of life–eachother.” 

I look at him and understand. The sting of guilt hits me hard. “I’ve completely misjudged life.” I say, hanging my head. 

“We all have.” Frost says. “But without life we would never have learned to appreciate love. And in Heaven, that is what we are measured by.”

Then he steps away from the ladder and motions me toward it.

I look at him, a question on my face. 

“Go on now, Orson. They’re waiting for you. You’re ready now.” 

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still.

I glance at Frost. “Heaven?”

He nods. 

I am as nervous as a schoolboy. I tentatively approach the ladder, and lift my right foot onto the lowest rung. 

“Death be not proud,” Frost says from behind me, in a resounding voice. “Though some have called thee, mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so.” 

I turn over my shoulder. “And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die!” 

Frost smiles, and there is a hint of a tear in his own eyes. He shakes his head. “And death shall be no more. And so it is. It has been a pleasure meeting you, Orson.”

And then he is gone. 

“Orson!” I hear Claudia’s voice ring like a bell from above. 

I gaze upwards at where the ladder fades into the sun, and begin to climb.