What Choice?

Notice: This poem may be offensive. A recent review compels me to warn that I have borrowed words from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” I had posted, in the description, that this poem was an allusion to Robert Frost. The reviewer took offense at that characterization, and though an allusion is in my poem, it is important that the reader understand I have borrowed words from Frost’s poem.

As with most of my poems, the words that comprise “What Choice?” came to me while writing in my journal. Weeks later, while posting Poems from my journal, I must have hastily put in the description. I must have assumed people would realize the phrases “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” and “took the one less traveled by” were launching points for the thought process that continues in “What Choice?” Alluding to the choice, I had no clue that others might accuse me of “stealing” these words from Robert Frost, any more than writing the words, “God Bless America” would be stealing words from Irving Berlin.

If you choose to continue reading this poem, please know I am responding to “The Road Not Taken,” but not commenting on it, or comparing myself to Robert Frost. I am not criticizing Frost’s poem, or Robert Frost himself. I mean nothing negative whatsoever in my use of his words in this Poem. Know the above described two phrases are Frost’s words, not mine.



What Choice?

When we understood that
two roads diverged
in a yellow wood,
we forgot that
the path is the goal.

But we took the one
less traveled by,
and the difference
led us to the clear
thinking, and the path.

Is the goal to choose
the path we will
trample on, and wear it
a little closer to the
path we do not choose?

Or to watch the verve,
and the life that makes
the path, the brooks we
cross, and the fish and
snakes within our vision?

Within our vision is the choice
we just chose, while hearing
this poem, to watch
rather than choose, to choose
the path as the goal—

and not the choice.