Wasn’t he the guy who wrote poetry

up in Ripton, you said,

when I asked you, if you knew

Frost. If you ever bumped into him.

On one of his trips down the mountain.

Driving through East Middlebury.

Where everyone knows everybody.

It’s likely even a bard would stop

for a drink at the Waybury.

Give the impression he was local

enough. Take a few lines he could use

back to his cabin. Up there in the cathedral

of pines Hazlett Upson planted.

Famous around here, back then, across

the nation. For his Saturday Evening Post

Alexander Botts Tractor Stories. And his

house, the Dragon’s Den, just below

Bread Loaf’s Inn, The fields Stafford

Dragon mowed for Frost and him.

Frost telling a reporter once, when he was

asked how his poems sounded so natural,

that he got his best lines from a Dragon

in Ripton, Vermont. Giving in to saying

our state’s name, to locate where in the world

Ripton is. Saying, the word he used when

reading, reciting one of his verses. Wanting,

it seems, to want us to believe he was one

of the guys, stopping after work to raise a glass,

toasting his horse. Shaking, he would write,

“his harness bells.” Dusting the snow off.

Filling in his tracks. Making it hard to know

if they were leaving or coming back to the village.

Its country store. Or waiting for the snow

to stop. Before starting out again, Frost might

have told you, where they had to go.

Gary Margolis

Cornwall