There is a small stream at the end of Emerson Street that I call “Hyla Brook,” named after the Frost poem. The Hyla Brook in both the poem and at the end of the street are modest, unremarkable features. Frost’s Hyla Brook is intermittent; my Hyla Brook enters into a culvert where this photo is taken to travel under a five-way road intersection. My kids and I used to go on “adventures” down the culvert, maybe a hundred yards to where it comes out on Shepard Road.
There is nothing that better reflects “Sense of Place” than Frost’s Hyla Brook poem. The poem concludes with the line “We love the things we love for what they are.” That’s love indeed. We don’t really love something if it is because it is the most superlative at anything; we don’t really love something that fits certain ideals. We love the things we love for what they are: something that we feel a sense of belonging to independently of their objective worth, most typically people and places.
I am reminded of another Frost poem by my own little Hyla Brook. The concluding lines for “A Tuft of Flowers” are:
“Men work together,” I said from the heart,
“Whether they work together or apart.”
“A Tuft of Flowers” is about a man who stops to admire a tuft of flowers while turning the hay. He initially thinks he is alone in his endeavors, but then realizes that the only reason he can admire the flowers is because the person cutting the hay also admire them and left them alone.
I used to have a neighbor who left many home improvement projects unfinished. There were many ways in which he and I were totally different. Yet every spring he would plant flowers by our little “Hyla Brook,” in front of the stone boulders you see in this photo. The photo was taken last week after a recent snowfall. There is nothing really special about it, except to me.
The "Hyla Brook" on Emerson Street
