OctPoWriMo 10 - Around That Bend

Today's prompt asks us to write a reply to another poem. I chose Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. It has always struck me how many people read it as a comment on how wonderful it is to take the less-traveled road, when if you really read it carefully he says clearly that the roads are equally worn. I believe he's gently poking fun at the idea that taking the road less-traveled is better.

The Road Not Taken

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.
~Robert Frost

Around That Bend

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less-traveled by…”
Or so I say with a sigh, yet I
Remember the other was “just as fair,”
And really the grass was just as green,
The fallen leaves were no more black,
No footprints marred either path.
I say, “It made all the difference,” yet
I cannot where know the other led.
Sometimes I lay upon my bed
And dream of what I might have met
If I had stepped around that bend.
~Esther Spurrill Jones