Yellow Wood

Those roads diverging
are everything.
The simple question
followed by a 
thought experiment,
as if my inner
all-knowing eye could
look fully down each path.

And then a choice. A or B
You could choose A.  
Go to A’s college and work
at A’s career and marry
A’s lover. Have A’s children,
invest with A’s money,
retire at A’s time. 
And maybe wonder, 
wonder always
where B would have led. 

The small religious college,
not the ivy-trimmed degree. 
The elusive career
discovered too late to
climb the same ladders.
The relationships and the
miscarriage and the should-
have-started-earlier 401k. 
That’s where B led. That’s 
the road taken. 

And from the bench I rest
upon halfway, maybe more, 
down B’s path, I think of A. 
I always see it neatly trimmed, 
all downhill. Maybe there’s even
a bike. But there is 
no you.  And  you
are everything. 


© 2021 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved