When I was in 4th Grade, my teacher read aloud Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Then she gushed in a warm-and-fuzzy way about how beautiful the poem was, how dreamy, how rich with gentle feel-good sounds and imagery.
In college I studied the poem again in an American literature course. Was it a warm and fuzzy poem? the professor asked rhetorically. No. It was a rumination on death. The dark woods. The darkest evening of the year. The horse’s desire to get out of there. The poet’s realization (hopeful wish?) that he still had a long way to go in his life. It’s a meditation on his own mortality. A dark poem.
Many years later I took a poetry writing course, and I reworked Frost’s poem so that the woods are now cruising grounds for gay men and guys on the down-low. As always, I enjoyed the challenge, and present it here.
Dropping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know –
He lives with wife in village. Though
He often leaves her, drinks some beer
And hooks up with some strangers here –
Nameless men who aren’t quite queer
But furtive, urgent, down and low.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Or roadside love shack bungalow,
Or roadside bar that tenders beer
(With shirtless waiters and cashier)
To married men so insincere
That often nights they disappear,
Stay away till morning break,
Then stumble home with dim headache
To Wife who lies in bed awake
Denying that her soul will break.
They’ll stick it out. She’ll persevere
These darkest evenings of the year.
My little horse must think it queer
He gives his harness bells a shake
Lifts his tail, parts his rear
And pumps out brown to stain the snow
All because he had to go
Between the field and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
Dark as last night, dark next year
Punch-through dark at life’s frontier
Men pursue men through the snow.
To the woods high-ho they go.
Seek some comfort, know no slake,
Whatever will their lives partake
While back at home Wives lie awake,
The Wives, the lies, the lives opaque.
These men, too, often stain the snow
Perhaps too often stain the snow
My little horse must think it queer
Or so I think. But who’s to know
What horses think? I’m just some schmo
Who’s stopping here to watch men tramp through falling snow.
High-ho, they gaily forward go.
I think that I must be a queer
This darkest evening of the year.
Dark and lonely, so austere
Frozen through and full of fear
Singing like some balladeer
To hide the loathsome thoughts I know
That drift down like these flakes of snow.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
They lure us men here, sure as sheep.
We’ll bleat and cry, deny and weep
Of promises we plan to keep –
Denials to go before we sleep –
Denials to go before we sleep –
It blankets us in snow-white sleep.
– Bruce Ballard
