Roads Untravelled

You did not go;
there is no turning,
only a forest track
where trees bend in secret.

You turned your weary back, accepted
the curious defeat of steps retraced,
accepted having other destinations
where light throws deeper shadows.

Not going made you believe
other roads, more metalled, more direct,
comforted you with a easier journey.

As if not going was a choice to be revisited;
as if the left-behind could come into view
and with its nostalgia, bedevil you;
as if your feet could skip back into a dream
that lies buried in the graves of the past.

Then, with one step you decided and,
with one step back decided again,
standing still or retreating you went on,
deciding nothing, except to walk away.

Long after the secretive trails peter out
in plantations of forgotten forestry
or the overgrown ruts of wheel or hoof,
heel, toe and boot-steps ramble on,
like you, over worn-to-death ground,
you know, in going, there is no way back,
after forks in the road, deviations,
parallel journeys, one way or another.

Sometimes, as if you had learned nothing
about travel or roads, you see a similar light
in the green distance far beyond the grass
and bracken verges where trees hook
over the path in a canopy of clasped branches;
still you cannot decide, enticed, cautious,
one foot on gravel, one on tractionless mud,
how to make your way.

In your dream, the same old ghosts
tell you there are no two ways about it:
come or go you are always where you are
no use looking behind, none in regret.

Looking down a road, along it or ahead,
what you see is only road, untravelled,
because you have not yet gone.

© BH, 2018/2023

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Robert Frost, Bruce Hornsby - The Road Not Taken - shed different  lights on not going or not having went. It’s an existential dilemma, I thought. So I gave it some consideration.

In our gameshow world we love to replay caution’s failure to try to find out if risk would have turned up success. We do a lot of whatiffery. It rivals whataboutery in the futile exercises of our times.

Suffice it to say, the journey we make after taking a step back, then going on is altogether different from the same journey begun without hesitation. In the moment’s pause a tree could fall, the sun go behind cloud or lightning strike us down.

The illustration is actually my garden in the gloaming of a summer night looking away to a trail through the Bloomington (IN) limestone quarries.  

webmasterhill · Roads Untravelled