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.

The Fall/Winter issue (v5.n2) of Poetry Northwest is beginning to arrive now in mailboxes everywhere; and with it–in the northern hemisphere, at least–the longer nights and falling leaves of autumn.  To mark both of these arrivals, we bring you, this week and next, two riffs by Eric McHenry on Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”  A third appears as “Stay” in the current issue of the magazine. The Lovelier As They Fall (1) Fall’s first gold is green. The leaves give up their sheen for texture and a tinge. Their edges curl and singe. Then, like a book of matches, the whole crown kindles, catches, and glows against the lawn. So day goes down to dawn. — 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. Next: more from Eric McHenry’s “The Lovelier As They Fall”