Paths

A hundred years of nights and days
since Robert Frost surveyed two paths,
while time caromed through history's maze
and culture burst with heat that crazed
the china mores of the past.

A simple time, a wooded place,
within, without, choose this or that.
New England's order, peace and grace
mock Texas plains where rocks replace
leaf-covered ways with vast grass mat.

Nothing stands to block my way;
a hundred paths each step could birth.
I long for order – yea or nay –
as choices wail to have their say
and force a measure of their worth.

Would Frost concede the challenge worse
or scorn the shallow weight I give,
my literal reading of his verse?
I'll never know. We can't reverse
time's path but each the now will live.

This Path (Kindle Locations 91-108).