Not Just Gold

As I walk out in the Spring world I often remember what Robert Frost wrote:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

It's true that the early leaf is a flower, the tiny fist of bud opening to those ruffly, petal-like, flower-like leaves. They aren't only gold, though, they're also peach and apricot and yellow-orange and bronzed-rose and burgundy and cardinal red.

Such a plethora of detail becomes a complication that doesn't fit in the Frost poem, as it happens. It's how writing works. And I love this poem, how he captures the pathos under the beauty.

Nevertheless, for me it's important to notice that the very first colors the leaves show are their particular colors without chlorophyll. All the trees will go to work, putting on their uniform greens as they grow and take up their grown-up duties, but their first flower and their fall flame tell a deeper, more complex story than just gold.

So it is that we humans put on our work-a-day suits and partly hide ourselves. And the colors underneath are also interesting and worthy of notice, and it isn't just gold that counts