POETRY + DIVERGENT PATHS

Seventh grade. Class assignment: memorize a poem and recite it to the class. I don’t remember why I chose this poem by Robert Frost;  knowing my thirteen year old self, I probably grabbed a poetry book off the school library shelf an hour before my scheduled recitation and randomly opened it and began to carve the words into my brain.

Apparently, the grooves are still there.  Tromping through the woods recently, I came upon two diverging paths and the entire poem came flooding back.   Take a walk with me?

The Road Not Taken        by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference!