Kobe and Gianna Bryant. Ara Zobayan. Christina Mauser. Sarah and Payton Chester. John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli.
These are the names of the lives lost last Sunday in a helicopter accident. Los Angeles is still reeling and trying to learn how to cope with a week after the tragedy.
Some find refuge with boxing gloves and a lifeless punching bag. Others will translate their energy into a cycle of endless naps due to sleepless nights. The outlet that always comes in last is poetry.
There is no correct formula for mourning because emotions are sturdy as the stock market. Maybe when our feelings fail to make sense, someone else’s words will.
I found this book on a dusty shelf in a bookstore located on the shores of Cape Town, South Africa. Desperate for a new read, “Robert Frost’s Poetry & Prose” seemed as good as anything. While the red cover is not headlining the news, there are hidden gems among the 463 pages.
So… who’s Robert Frost? Frost was a humorous character who would send his friends notes full of poems and prose—perhaps the beginning of the current meme culture. The sarcastic words coupled with thought provoking ideologies on life brings a balance through poetry and prose.
His words slowly begin to heal the heart acting as a temporary band aid, but over time the stanzas will act like more permanent stitches. Here are some of the best stanzas from various Robert Frost poems that have helped this week in an attempt to process.
In his poem “Home Burial” a father accounts the time he had to bury his son.
“Tell me about it if it’s something human. Let me into your grief. I’m not so much.”
The key word being human. Human emotions are like an uncharted map filled with blankness. The big picture is a clear shape, but the little lines and mountains represent the details in between.
“The Road Not Taken” is one of his most famous poems for good reason.
“I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Each victim of the helicopter crash has taken the road nobody wants to travel. Their faces and past will remain with loved ones, changing the nation to be better.
Frost’s journal was often quoted throughout the book, giving a glimpse past his famed poems.
“Hope is not found in a way out but a way through.”
There is hope in any situation because eventually, growth will stem out of tragedy. In this past week, I have seen a glimpse of humanity that has been absent in a polarized nation.
Robert Frost’s poem insinuates that we all feel human, so let’s not forget that.
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