Orion Rising

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May 1, 2005

Yellow Wood

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
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.

I've been teaching this Frost poem again, and I always love my students' reaction to the ambivalence they inevitably read in the speaker's contrariety toward his choice. I also like the poem for its attention to woods with which I am myself intimately familiar; like many Frost poems, this one helps lead me on my daily tramps through the woods behind our home.

Yellow has long been the color that frames my seasons; late August's flames of goldenrod are bittersweet harbingers of autumn, and the final colors to fade from the landscape in late October are the yellow, downy needles of the tamarack.

Among my favorite signs of spring -- not that I don't cherish the snowdrops, crocuses, and now daffodils that have poked their heads above the warming soil -- are the wild yellow violets that speckle the trails across the road in astonishing clusters of tiny petals on sunlit slopes. Starved for color, I get on my knees on the black-trodden leaves both to cherish the discovery and to think ahead to the cycle of seasons that begins with this intimate moment on the damp earth beneath still leafless trees.

Last weekend, Jen, Orion, and I attended Jen's grandfather's unveiling. As the sun broke through wind-driven clouds and a chime on a nearby maple measured its own time, we remembered the man from whom our son takes his middle name. I thought about Jen's grandfather and about his great-grandson, and the life that he might now lead -- of which paths he will choose that he might live as rich and long a life as his great-grandfather.

For now, I'll hold him close as we look at the first yellow petals of spring together, and maybe take some guidance from him before I enter my own autumn's yellow wood (perhaps as my Virgil sometime after nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). The choices may indeed not ultimately be that important, but attention to the path we walk together -- with its flowers underfoot -- is essential.

Posted by pavel at May 1, 2005 4:18 PM

Comments

Posted by: gina at May 2, 2005 6:13 AM

Posted by: Rurality at May 3, 2005 1:34 PM

Posted by: Liz Chapman at May 11, 2005 9:00 PM