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Home » A Poem Written at Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference

A Poem Written at Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference

When I was teaching last summer at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont, I got to tour the Robert Frost cabin and also walk an interpretive trail where poems by Frost have been printed on metal signs and posted along the way. A small incident happened at the poem “The Road Not Taken” and I’ve written about it. This is my offering to you today. I guess it’s about never giving up hope. Also, it’s about the depths of beauty and meaning that poetry has brought to my life, and how I’d want that for all of us. 

What does the sign say?

the small child asked her grandmother.

It’s a long poem, the grandmother replied.

Will you read it? the child asked.

Her sunglasses, her backpack,

her shoes were all plastic.

Are you going to stand still

while I read the whole thing?

asked the grandmother (short-haired).

The child promised.

So the woman began: Two roads diverged…

I tiptoed past.

The trail in Robert Frost’s woods

had not yet bent in the undergrowth

when the first stanza ended and 

the child quickly asked for a snack.

It’s strange how the ferns 

and wild carrot went blurry for me.

I felt as if, in that moment, something

was permanently lost.

The child is young, I told myself.

The words are confusing.

They diverge.

I knew it, the grandmother said.

I knew you wouldn’t listen.

But she didn’t know.

So much can happen in a stanza.

A child can catch her first glimpse

of a yellow wood wherein a trail

loops back on itself and 

something a person never knows

missing can at long last be found.

Written by:
Janisse Ray
Published on:
March 3, 2023
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Janisse Ray

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