The Road Not Taken

The Robert Frost poem is one of my favourites:

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.


One always does wonder what might have happened if the choice to move to Japan had not been made. I'm not sighing yet, but this is the scene at the side of Peace Boulevard in Hiroshima, which I see every morning as I drop M off to catch her bus to school.It always reminds me of this poem, and makes me think of all the divergences I've stood before in my life, and the roads I've decided to take for myself and for Mairi. The ones that have made all the difference....hopefully....