This one by Robert Frost draws me in every so often, maybe a continued reluctance to let go, even as continuing aging makes old adages turn to concrete, “Let go or be dragged.”

Reluctance, by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?

A weather front has brought in hints of autumn. Temperatures dropped a bit and last night leaving work the sun was already lower than it seemed even the night before. It’s getting dark earlier. A bit of mood settled over me too. Remorse? Well, not quite but a bit of a sadness. The entire summer has passed and that has never troubled me before. It’s not at all my season and I usually look forward to fall happily. I welcome the earlier darkness and the chill and the rush of dead leaves; funny, not even the changing colors but the smell of dead leaves and the sound they make in the wind and beneath my feet. Yet the early signs of autumn aren’t comforting me. The prevailing emotion, though not sharp, was loss, and that’s so unlike me when towards the end of August every year a window to the next season opens briefly and the air cools.

“But the feet question whither…”

That’s exactly what I felt leaving work. It wasn’t home calling me as I rounded the corner off 8th Avenue into a shadowed sidestreet. It wasn’t home. Where is home anyway? That’s what I felt. Where is home? Is it forward to the train and back to Brooklyn and the dog and the park? Or is it somewhere behind me in time. It’s lingered also, this strange creep of nostalgia for something that didn’t even happen, to my knowledge. It feels like leaving the house knowing I’ve forgotten something or left something behind and can’t figure out what it is.

Where does one go with these feelings except to the place called home, but for some reason isn’t feeling like home? It’s where all my things are. It’s where I eat and sleep and wash myself and leave every morning. Yet home seems somewhere else. Somewhere behind me.

“Let go or be dragged.”

Can I let go if I don’t know what I’m letting go of? It has to be identified and named first, no?

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.

What is it I need to let go of?