It's National Poetry Month!

April is National Poetry Month!

Poetry is a special kind of writing that paints a picture with words. It's a concisely-written, yet mind-expanding expression of ideas or feelings, capturing the very essence of an idea, a mood, an observation, or a life experience.

My favorite poem, The Road Not Taken, was written by Robert Frost, one of America's most celebrated poets. It was published in 1916 as the first poem in the collection Mountain Interval.

In the poem, Frost presents the reader with a picture of a cool autumn day, when a person can shuffle his or her feet through freshly fallen, golden leaves and kick up the smells of the fall season. The central theme is about making choices in our lives, knowing that each decision made has consequences. The path is a metaphor for life, while the fork in the path is a metaphor for the choices we are often faced with. Our destiny evolves based on the choices we make in our lives as we travel our individual journeys. Hopefully, there are no regrets, because life has a funny way of getting busy, one thing leading into another, until there is no going back.

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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.