ALL ROADS
H. W. Bryce
After Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
All roads, they say, lead into Rome.
What if I took Road A, so greened?
Long I planned and and prayed, shalom,
And what if I never left my home?
Would I in life be high esteemed?
What if Road B should I roam,
No plan and nothing else to contravene,
Should I travel life without a home?
Should I write a life-guide tome?
Such a dare I dare not dare, I deemed.
In hopes of Kubla’s pleasure dome,
I pondered plans from A to zed and leaned
Toward uncharted ways to roam.
What if I found a home in Rome?
What if from if I then was weaned?
If truth be told from out the gloam
From age with wisdom wisely gleaned,
The what Ifs are but an old mug’s game,
And deep at heart they’re all the same.
Rome can wait, I’ll till the world’s rich loam.
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Robert Frost’s famous poem title has been oft mangled, including by me on Friday, but that was deliberate.
Too many people took the first two words of the real title, “The Road,” and remembered the penultimate word of the penultimate line in the poem “traveled”. (original US spelling)
This produced titles like The Road Less Traveled, with variations such as the path less travelled.
I was reading a book of American poets when I rediscovered the real poem.
That took me to the site of an erudite scholar discussing diffuculties with the poem itself, and with Frost’s own difficulties with his friend and hiking pal Edward Thomas. Thomas apparently didn’t “get” the poem, or that Frost had built in a bit of joke on his pal.
So, after writing a couple of Note Poems, “The Path Less Taken,” posted last Friday on my “Chasing a Butterfly with Ann” page on Facebook, and one other, not being published, here is my “take” on Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”
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Image by freewouldbegood from Pixabay
