September 19 Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

Today’s post is a special treat, this is one of my favorite poems from childhood. Teachers read it to us in Elementary School to inspire us. It’s their way of saying, “your life is an open book filled with adventure.” I suppose, but there are some adventures I’d like not to have. My death defying tussle with the IRS or my skirmish with Traffic Court.  Yeah, adult adventures are never as fun as kid versions (hell, even the adult version of pirates is miserable! those guys will actually cut of your head).

But I do think that it is important to explore your world and always try something new at the cost of not getting to venture toward something comfortable and beloved. I love my daily perambulation down 8th Street, but today I went down the wild and woolly 15th with its ramshackle shacks and its untamed forest (habitat preserves). I ended up on a hill lined with tall trees all turning yellow up in the blue sky and just beyond them were the black slopes of the Cascade Mountains. It was breath taking, a once in a lifetime moment; it was a feeling you can’t record and keep digitally. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, but it was worth it.

Symbol or No-symbol for this poem (does this poem have a symbol)? Do I have to ask?

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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 step 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.