Not Thinking About the FAQs

The Tuft of Flowers
by Robert Frost

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
 
The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.
 
I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
 
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,
 
‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
 
But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a ‘wildered butterfly,
 
Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.
 
And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.
 
And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
 
I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
 
But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
 
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
 
I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
 
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
 
The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
 
That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
 
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
 
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
 
‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

Not Thinking About the FAQs

“I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry…“
(“From The Tuft of Flowers” by Robert Frost)

No, I think about mourning, and the breaking of day;
About loess, and things misplaced.

I think about trust—and its undoing.
I think about service and the limits to service.

I think about strife and the pen—the cage mightier than the sword;
The pinprick mightier than the life.

I think about those refusing to choose between rotten alternatives.

I think about the human use of human beings,
About the giving and receiving of gifts, and about nothing.

I think about that which is left after nothing.

A horn sounding in the distance,
I rise from my chair and wait for the shots to follow.
I think about sparks spiraling up into the bad night air.

I think about love and the limit as the change in x goes to zero.

I think about word become the flesh of commerce.
I think about that which is made in the image of image.

I think about dust and ashes,
And as I am caught up in the rapture of stoking the wood-stove
And sweeping the floor,
I think about those so afraid they are going to die
That they are willing to kill everything around them.

I think about grief and the removal of grief.

I think about speech and the end to speech.