One winter nearly a century ago, 
Professor G’s Massachusetts farmhouse 
caught fire and burned down. 
He was a gentleman farmer
and lived there only in the summers.

No one knew how the fire started.
It was the depths of the Depression. 
Desperate people roamed the countryside. 

Notified by a neighbor, 
the volunteer fire department arrived 
too late to save the house.

Professor and Mrs. G drove up
the next day. Among the ruins
they found a volume 
of Robert Frost’s poetry. 

The cover was warped,
and there were scorch marks
at the edges of the pages.

On the title page still smelling 
of smoke was the poet’s inscription. 
His conventional message conveyed 
his good wishes to the professor.

The occasion was a poetry reading
at the college five years ago.
There was a celebratory dinner
for Frost before the reading,
where faculty were invited. 

The poet arrived at the last minute 
without a necktie, despite 
having been given explicit instructions
about the college dress code.

So Frost could attend his own dinner,
Professor G loaned him a beautiful tie
purchased the previous year 
from a London haberdasher
made of fine silk in rich stripes 
of blue, red, and gold.

Frost wore the tie to dinner
and afterwards to the reading.
When he left the next morning,
he took the tie with him
and never did return it,
although the professor wrote 
to remind him it was not a gift.