Last week, we featured the first of three takes by Eric McHenry on Robert Frost’s immortal “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”  This week, we bring you the second of these riffs.  The third appears as “Stay” in the Fall/Winter 2010-11 issue (v5.n2) of Poetry Northwest.

The Lovelier As They Fall (2)

Summer’s last green is gold.
The sycamore catches cold
and, with a silent sneeze,
infects the other trees.
Colors like doctors go
from house to house, as though
something gold could say
might keep the cold away.

—

Eric McHenry’s first book of poems, Potscrubber Lullabies (Waywiser Press), received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, Common Knowledge, Seattle Review, The Guardian (U.K.) and Slate. He teaches creative writing at Washburn University.