Nothing Gold Can Stay

An Apostle Islands postcard.

It is just a flicker, hardly noticeable at first over Basswood Island, but enough to make me stay. To watch, and wait. And, I do.

Soon, the light brightens almost imperceptibly on the horizon as if someone is blowing softly on the embers of a celestial campfire. Growing. Glowing. Rising like a song until it is strong enough to reflect off the water as if it is not enough to see such beauty only once. I feel at catch at my throat, knowing what the poet knows: that it won’t and cannot last:

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

— Robert Frost.

And then it is gone. Nothing gold, or green, or so beautiful it takes the breath away can ever stay, or for that matter, ever really be lost.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted)

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