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Right, that's a good one !("Reluctance") I had overlooked it whenever I've leafed through his collected poems. Another one-word title naming an emotion is "Bereft", one that hits right between the eyes! But there are probably 30 or so from him that I'd put near the top on a list of favorites by anybody.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
Thanks Ralph. Maybe we have had enough of Robert Frost. What of Langston Hughes or Ogden Nash? Anyone ever read any of the poems from Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman? They are written for two voices. Very beautiful to hear read aloud.
Two Haiku from Kobayashi Issa (translated by Robert Hass)
(heads up President C)
Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.
Mosquito at my ear --
Does it think
I'm deaf?
Since I have found my way to Booktalk, my house is rather casually kept!
Saffron
So, even though forgotten, the decaying wood-pile is creating a more hospitable swamp. This does seem beautiful.
---just thinking out loud, if you will. I'm not sure this fits with the rest of the poem. I better go back and read it again.
Saff
Still thinking about the Robert Frost poem, The Wood-Pile. The poem seems suddenly sadder. I think now that the wood-pile is potential never used, something left unfinished or behind. I want to know what happened to the woodcutter? Why hasn't he come back?
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:40 am Post subject: The Wood-Pile
Ahha! I know! The cut wood is all the unfinished poems - I have whole book of them myself! The woodcutter is busy in the kitchen with dishes and dinners, laundry, and keeping up with the yard, not to mention the 3 daughters.
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject: Shakespeare anyone?
116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
-- If this be error and upon me proved,
-- I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Saffron, are you saying that you are "Someone who live[s] in turning to fresh tasks", too? I like his poems partly because you never need to wonder what else they might mean. That is in the good old Yankee tradition. So "Stopping by Woods" was said to be about death, but why go there, is my thought.
Sonnet 116 seems unusual in that it may be one of the few in the whole group with that kind of pure idealism--at least that's my impression. So many of the rest are bitter, ironic, or even vicious. They clearly describe a real relationship (or two) in the poets's life. My fav I think would be 77, an opposite feeling from the one you gave us.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see't the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
I'm certain I deserve it. 
