Poem of the Day, For My Dad: The Tuft of Flowers, by Robert Frost

I found this poem in college in a class of Miss Vincent's, and heard it again this week, in my voice, when I turned on my iPod Shuffle for Benji's work-day entertainment while I'm gone.  I have my Librivox recordings on the iPod and this is what came up randomly.  I had forgotten all about having recorded it a few years ago.

It brought me back to that year in college when I sent this poem to my Dad.  He's not a poetry kind of guy, but there was a story behind it. 

I'd come home one day during my high school years to find Dad outside all sweaty, and he asked me to come outside to the pasture. 

I asked, "What? Why?" with teenage attitude, I'm sure. 

He said, "Just walk down there and see what you see." 

So I walked, wonderingly, and found that he had hand-mowed the mid-summer waist-high grass with a scythe. 

"What?  You mowed?" I asked.

"Yep, walk a little further," he answered.

So, I did, and I found, to my great surprise, that he had mown everything flat except for a tuft of daisies, my favorites, then.  I liked them for their purity, their lack of show or pretense, for their simplicity.  They were like me, I liked to think, then, a little country girl.

That's why later, when we read this poem in class I had to copy it and send it to him.  Mom said when he got that letter from college, he nearly cried.

The Tuft of Flowers

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 leveled 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.’