Tag: Robert Frost

Yellow Wood

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment 
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

The Old Poet

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

The old poet
behind a desk
reading aloud
from Frost.
Behind him,
a bookcase
filled with
others’ poems
and a few of his own.

Above the bookcase,
a specimen drawing
of a bluegill.
On top of the bookcase,
between books stacked
and waiting for
a permanent home,
a large feather,
turkey or hawk,
in a mug for soup
long ago surrendered
to pens and feathers.

An Hermes 3000
to his left,
bought new in the sixties,
a well-traveled machine
that has seen Paris,
London, and an
entire season on the
Costa del Sol,
though mostly
untouched then
while the poet
pursued belleza
and drank.

And a shovel,
its handle
propped in the corner
made by the bookcase
and the wall,
waiting to spread
manure or dig
potatoes or take
a side gig as
walking stick
when the reading
ends and the work
of the land
carries on.

The old poet
looks up from
the worn book in
his worn hands
to push the final
words through his
soft stubbled lips.
He closes the book,
assigns reading,
and bids farewell.
A bent finger
clicks the mouse,
and his students
disappear.

© 2020 Deb Moore,  All Rights Reserved

I Should Get Out More

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

(Written on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2017)

I should get out more,

Walk the woods like William Wordsworth or Robert Frost or Mary Oliver,

Watch nature more closely,

Learn the names of trees and the songs of birds.

 

I should feel cold more, or hot.

It won’t kill me.

I should get sand in my shoes

and mosquito bites and poison ivy.

I should walk in the woods more.

 

I should stand next to water more,

a riverbank, a lakeside, a sea shore.

I should skip more stones

and make more ripples.

I should not be afraid of those who live there,

the frogs, the turtles, the fish.

I should dip my toe in and make friends of the natives.

 

I should buy a kayak

and change my lifestyle

so that it becomes the kind of lifestyle

conducive to kayaks.

 

I should pass no sunny hours in candlelit rooms with blinds closed

sitting at a desk writing poetry.

I should take full advantage of beautiful days,

follow roads that short of the decision to take them would remain not taken.

I should choose differently, trading this thing I love for that thing I love.

I should live differently.

I should get out more.