Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Robert Frost, perhaps America's most beloved poet. He lived from 1874 to 1963.

He received four Pulitzer Prizes, the Congressional Gold Medal, and was named Poet Laureate of Vermont.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Putting in the Seed.

It's a springtime poem, so for many of you, it might feel a little far off,

and then for others of you, it will feel very appropriate as you're beginning to do yard work and plant gardens

and work on the trees and cut out garden beds and try to plant your grass. You're spending time out there

in the weeds and in the dirt. But it seems the appropriate time of year to read this poem to you.

It goes like this. You come to fetch me from my work tonight when supper's on the table and we'll see if I can

leave off burying the white soft petals fallen from the apple tree. Soft petals, yes, but not so barren

quite, mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea. And go along with you ere you lose sight of what you came for

and become like me, slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How love burns through the pudding in the seed on through the watching for that early birth,

when, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, the sturdy seedling with arched body comes shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

So this is actually a sonnet, or at least it has some of the hallmarks of the sonnet form.

It's got the three quatrains in the couplet.

It's got the turn after those three quatrains leading into the couplet at the end.

But it's also got many of the hallmarks,

the things that are most common in Robert Frost's work,

the colloquial speech, for example,

the realism, the depictions of rural life,

all those kind of things that Frost is known for show up here.

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