A Year of Reading |
Poetry Friday: "I am overtired" Posted: 16 Oct 2020 03:30 AM PDT AFTER APPLE PICKING by Robert Frost My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep. I know I've been perky and positive in the past about my remote teaching gig, and all of the positives are still there. But I'm here today to tell you the other part of the truth: teaching remotely is hard. So so so very hard. Sit at the kitchen table completely stuck saying over and over again, "I don't know how to do this" hard. Long hours hard. Just longing to hand out a worksheet instead of making everything hard. How can I possibly reach every child hard. Overwhelmingly exhausted hard. So even though this poem is about apple picking, it is about teaching remotely. How it takes over every waking and sleeping minute. And just at this moment, on a Friday after a late night of conferences on Wednesday and another this morning (and I still have to get ready for math), "For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired." |
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