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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Birches

http://assets.flavorwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/farm2.jpeg

The strange thing is: I just can't take my eyes off this picture. Why? I wonder.

This is a picture of Robert Frost's farm in Derry, New Hampshire.

For me, a familiar sight from the dim and distant past.

I lived in Derry for only a few months, during the winter, and the fall, and possibly the spring. But it was a gray spring, and gray weather all through, as I remember it. Except when there was white snow, but still with gray sky.

Which is why I ended up in central Texas, and now in Egypt. Because in my blood is a craving for sun, and for dry weather.

But there's a part of me that feels a twinge of nostalgia at the sight of this photo. As I said, I can't stop looking at it.

The photo shows Derry as I never remember seeing it, in brilliant sunshine. And it shows the farmstead as I never remember seeing it, in its gleaming white fresh coat. Photographed from a vantage point which I never enjoyed--from a field on the other side of the road, giving an attractive foreground of greenish grass and piled gray stones. (You see, there is gray in the picture, after all!)

And, OK, there are no birches in the photo. But Frost wrote a wonderful poem about them. And they'll be in the next post. To be continued…

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