Welcome to our third Poetry Friday. Every Friday of this month, in honor of National Poetry Month, a staff member will choose a poem that is a particular favorite. This week we present a selection from Richard. Also, don’t forget that we are having a friendly competition this month where you can submit your own poems. Click here to learn all the details.

Chock it up to a short attention span, but I’ve always preferred brevity when it comes to poetry. Some of my favorite short poems are by Robert Frost. My parents introduced me to Frost’s poetry at a young age and consequently his poems have a strange sense of comfort and nostalgia despite their often despairing tone. Photographs of Frost on book jackets always reminded me of a kindly grandfather. A kindly grandfather who takes you aside during a birthday celebration to say “I know you are happy right now, but I’m afraid the universe is indifferent to your plight. Now enjoy your cake.”

Here are two of my favorites:

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I rued.

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.