Off The Beaten Track

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.

 

https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/road-not-taken

Advertisement