Barrels Full of Empty Dreams

Trying to make some kind of important connection to real life with the poem After Apple Picking by Robert frost proves to be a challenge. It is entirely possible that there is not a deeper meaning to the poem, but I simply refuse to believe that, so I am making one. I feel as though this poem could be symbolic of the process of life. At the beginning the narrator is explaining that he feels tired of apple picking due to the length of time he had been doing it and that there was an empty barrel beside him that he had not yet gotten to filling. I think this could represent the feeling of getting old. Older people often feel tired and as though they have not accomplished all they had set out to do. This is where the empty barrel comes in. The narrator had fully intended to use the barrel for the apples, but had gotten caught up with all the other barrels that he tired before he could fit it in. Similarly, aging people make "bucket lists" on which they write all the things they hope to do before they die. Very rarely are all the tasks completed and I believe this is where the poem starts off. It then progresses to address sleep. Sleep is notoriously representative of death, which is a natural part of the progression of life, following the theme I mentioned earlier on in this blog post.