For Once, Then, Something

For Once, Then, Something

By Robert Frost

  

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing

Deeper down in the well than where the water

Gives me back in a shining surface picture

Me myself in the summer heaven godlike

Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,

Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,

Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.

Water came to rebuke the too clear water.

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple

Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,

Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?

Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

For some reason I have always really liked this poem since reading it in high school.  I feel like I am searching for that pebble of quartz.  Every once in awhile, I look in the water just right and I am able to see that whiteness.  Every once in awhile I gain some insight into why Teagan couldn't stay.  Every now and then see more of the big picture.  It can be so fleeting.  And sometimes, just when I think I'm beginning to understand there is a ripple.  Then I have to find a different way to look into the water to try and find that 'truth' again.  The one thing I can tell you about that pebble of quartz, 'the bigger picture', its beautiful.  God made it and it's wonderful.  Our Father in Heaven has a plan for our family.  And even though some days I can't see it, I know its still there.