The Armful by Robert Frost

Last week I published a poem that I had carried with me in my wallet.  This poem is another one that I carried for quite a while.  I had hoped to memorize it, and at one point I could get most of it from memory, but that is gone now.  It is a funny thing, when I was young, I was in plays in school and could memorize large amounts of dialog, but as I have gotten older, my ability to memorize has been diminished.

"The Armful" isn't about shopping, obviously.  But when Frost wrote the poem, I don't think he could possibly have imagined the 'parcels' each of us in the 21st Century would carry.  And yet, wasn't life just as hard?  Just as complex?  Was it easier to farm in the early part of the 20th Century than to write I-phone apps for a living in the 21st?  I doubt it.  I think the key line is ' . . . I will do my best to keep their building balanced at my breast.'  It is the commitment to balancing all that life throws at us, even as we realize we drop the whole thing from time to time, that to me is the key to the poem.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
 I lose some other off my arms and knees,
 And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns
 Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
 Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
 With all I have to hold with hand and mind
 And heart, if need be, I will do my best
 To keep their building balanced at my breast.
 I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
 Then sit down in the middle of them all.
 I had to drop the armful in the road
 And try to stack them in a better load.

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