October 21: Being Selfish, Robert Frost, "In a Disused Graveyard"

I'm a little disappointed tonight.  Next Friday, my six-year-old son has a Halloween parade at his school.  He asked me this morning if I was going to come to see him.  I said I would try.  When I asked my supervisor at the medical office, I got a less than enthusiastic response.  There are a lot of people who have kids who are taking off early, including my supervisor.  Long story short:  it looks like I'm going to miss the costume parade.

I'm tired of having to miss things in my kids' lives because I have to work long hours at two jobs.  I'm tired of having to make sacrifices.  I want to be a little selfish right now.  Call in sick next Friday and screw everybody else.  I know that's not a very Christian attitude, but I can't help it.  For some reason, guys missing things like their kids' Halloween parades is alright, and that really bothers me.  It's a social double standard.  And it sucks.

Well, the Poet of the Week is Robert Frost.  Tonight's poem, in honor of Halloween (since it's on my mind right now), is about mortality and gravestones.

Saint Marty is going to have a drink when he gets home tonight.

In a Disused Graveyard

by:  Robert Frost

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie. 

WWFD:  What would Frost do?