The Roads Taken
Like someone before me
I once stood
Where two roads diverged;
But unlike him, I -
without delay -
I took the path
With the softer grass
Where fair butterflies
Were fluttering the way.
My feet tread light
Through branching trails
And not once I looked back,
The old path soon forgotten
For I was listening to the birds
Humming springtime songs;
I was looking for the silvan stream
Burbling in the thicket.
Until a moment ago
When a sudden silence
Summoned the shadows
of all the roads I didn’t take;
And I sighed, for maybe
I should have hesitated;
And I sighed, as I wondered
What I’d lost
With each new road
I left behind.
But at the edges
of that mountainous silence
Suddenly,
I heard water, again
As it sprung through the limestone
And made its way
Where there was none
And ran - precipitously at times -
into streams and rivers that
Somewhere, unforeseen,
Come together again.
There isn’t a road I didn’t take.