I’m going to make the English Major confession of a lifetime: I don’t love poetry.
I know. It’s shameful. I’ve tried, but I’ve discovered that I really go more for prose (go figure right?). Now I don’t hate poetry. I just don’t adore it. And this presents an interesting situation as my next semester’s big project involves taking a single poet and learning all about his life and works. Now if I really liked poetry like a good English major should, I would have probably already picked my poet. As of yet, I’m going through the Norton Anthology of Poetry dog-earing the pages.
I’ve narrowed it down a little bit. Gerard Manley Hopkins is a possibility. One of his poems struck me most especially, and while I’m not an expert on interpreting poetry, I could at least relate to it. The poem, “Spring and Fall,” is addressed to a young child named Margaret who is crying over the falling leaves in Autumn. The speaker at first seems to find it silly that Margaret is crying over something so trivial, and he comments that she will see many worse things in life to cry over. And for that reason, he comes to the conclusion that as she mourns the falling leaves, she is really mourning the passing of time, change—that all men must suffer—and that it is really she whom she mourns for.

Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Somehow, this sad scene reminded me of an amusing scenario from my early childhood. I was five years old and I was just learning the joys of dressing myself. Well, it was summer in Louisiana and I decided to wear sweat pants and a sweater. When I showed my mom, she said I would be too hot.
“Go stand outside for five minutes and you’ll see,” she said when I protested. I went and stood on the driveway and soon enough I began to cry loudly.
My mom hurried outside. “What’s wrong, Alexa?”
After rubbing my eyes and sniffling, I finally managed to explain. “I don’t know how long five minutes is!”
I remember my mom laughing (quite justifiably I might add) and I remember truly being consternated over the fact that I had no idea how to measure five minutes.
I suppose the poem reminded me of this because it not only showed the silly things that children cry over, but also the lesson we can even learn from that. At five years old, I had no concept of time and the idea of trying to measure it filled me with great anxiety. And yet now, I find myself measuring minutes, counting down the days to something else, to the point that I sometimes forget that today, right now, is all the time I have.
Sometimes I think it might be nice to be five again and to have no idea how long five minutes is. To be like Margaret and to have the worst thing I cry over be the falling leaves. But then, I probably would be missing out on things; like an insight into poetry (I’ll admit I’m starting to like it a little bit) or the ability to dress myself properly for spring or fall.
It’s rather strange to think that today marks the one-year anniversary of the release of Whispers of Nightfall. Time certainly does fly. If you haven’t gotten your copy, here’s the link to order one: http://www.tatepublishing.com/booksto...