This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.
Showing posts with label Robert Frost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Frost. Show all posts

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and a reply















Two Roads Diverged
in a Yellow Wood
A Road in a Yellow Wood
By Robert FrostBy Christopher Fox Graham
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.
We parted ways in that yellow wood
split at the fork to wander onward
I, the grassy one who wanted wear
my partner, the one bent below
the undergrowth where I could not go

the traveler stood between us
weighing our claims for his future
looking down us both as far as he could
as if the first footfalls hence
could reveal our destinations

Others had stood here on other mornings
longingly stretched their dreams down us
then trodden black the fallen leaves
and none had ever come back
to retry the other road

the traveler chose a route,
and made his way down his road
where he wound up, I cannot say
I am just the road in a yellow wood
the difference was his to make


I wrote and performed this poem tonight for the Sedona Visual Artists Coalition's "PATHWAYS...A Visual Journey" show in the Tlaquepaque Sala de la Milagro ballroom.