This morning’s idea was to select a poem, covering up everything but the last line. Then we were challenged to write a response/continuation of this line and this would create the first line of our new poem. This process was then repeated for the second to last line onwards until a draft of a new poem was created. I chose The Road not Taken by Robert Frost as it is a classic and my all time favourite and this is the first draft of my new poem in its non-tarted up state!
It Chose Me
For I have not abandoned me,
The fearful and the pragmatists
I followed what felt most alive
Another lifetime on perhaps
And yet a knowing inner smile
The straight and narrow stifled me
I’d drifted off to unknown lands
In case conformity did call
A journey into the unknown
With head or heart should I decide?
There was indeed no better fit
Appealed like a fresh mystery
It called to me in verdant voice
There was a certain tempting edge
My feet excited as they roamed
A gnarly, crooked, bumpy route
But it was difficult to tell,
to get a feel for where I stood
Yet choices are a part of life
I knew there was a risk to take
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
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.
2 thoughts on “Off The Beaten Track”