P is for Poems and Paths

This month I'm participating in the A to Z blogging challenge and posting every day in April (except Sundays) with the corresponding letter of the day. The theme I chose for this year is 26 Days of Gratitude. I'll be posting about people, places, things, and events in my life I'm grateful for. Today is the letter...








Long before I began writing novels, I wrote poems. As a kid, I wrote every type of poem you could imagine. Lyric, limerick, acrostic, haiku, and ballads (just to name a few). When I was in middle school, I enrolled in a couple writing classes, mostly focusing on poetry. It was in this poetry class at the local community college that I was
introduced to one of my all-time favorite poems....


The Road Not Taken                     

Photo courtesy of Lisabryne.me

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.


~~Robert Frost



This poem now has important significance to me as it describes a moment in my life when two paths were placed before me and I had to make a choice. After I graduated from high school, I thought I had my life planned out. I would attend a well-known college in Virginia with two of my closest friends, I would be near my bad boy boyfriend, I would major in broadcast journalism....


But another path was placed before me. The opportunity to attend college 2,000 miles away, to leave friends, family, and a boyfriend behind. It was a difficult choice. And after much thought and prayer, I decided to take the path "less traveled". I left my friends, my close-knit family, and my destructive relationship boyfriend behind. It turned out to be the best thing I've ever done in my life. It put me on a new road with a new journey and destination. When I look back, I can only imagine what my life would have been like if I'd chosen the other path. Trust me, it isn't pretty. It would have involved a lot of heartache and too many tears.


I took the road less traveled by, and that, my friends, has made ALL the difference.