Many of the contributors to this project can probably relate to the longing that I sometimes have for the time, like when my parents were students, that school children were ‘forced’ to memorize random bits of poetry for class. I’m sure I would have found it torturous at the time, but I like to think that I would appreciate it now, as whipping out a few stanzas at just the right moment would bring me great pleasure.

That being said, the only poem I successfully carry with me in my head to this day is Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’:

‘Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.’ . . .

I only really have it committed to memory in the first place because of my childhood obsession with the book The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, which I was assigned to read in the fifth grade.

Like my imagined feelings for those missed exercises of memorizing poetry, however, my fondness for these eight simple lines has grown over time as I’ve been confronted with the truly precious and fleeting nature of life over and over again.

. . . ‘So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.’

John “Jolly” Bavoso is a Washington, DC-based copywriter, editor and blogger. He writes on everything from celebrity gossip to queer issues to international affairs. You can find some of his work, among other places, on The New Gay and in the Diplomatic Courier.