Interpretation of a Poem by Frost

A young black girl stopped by the woods,

so young she knew only one man: Jim Crow

but she wasn’t allowed to call him Mister.

The woods were his and she respected his boundaries

even in the absence of fence.

Of course she delighted in the filling up

of his woods, she so accustomed to emptiness,

to being taken at face value.

This face, her face eternally the brown

of declining autumn, watches snow inter the grass,

cling to bark making it seem indecisive

about race preference, a fast-to-melt idealism.

With the grass covered, black and white are the only options,

polarity is the only reality; corners aren’t neutral

but are on edge.

She shakes off snow, defiance wasted

on the limited audience of horse.

The snow does not hypnotize her as it wants to,

as the blond sun does in making too many prefer daylight.

She has promises to keep,

the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,

the promise that she ride the horse only as long

as it is willing to accept riders,

the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,

the promise to her face that it not be mistaken as shadow,

and miles to go, more than the distance from Africa to Andover,

more than the distance from black to white

before she sleeps with Jim.