The Old Adventurer Stops in Frost's Woods

By William John Watkins

Two roads diverged in a springtime woods
and I took the one with the danger signs,
the one with the skulls and half burned trees,
the blast-cracked rocks and charred debris.
I thought at the end of a road like that
there'd be drums and drugs and fantasies
and golden haired women with unspeakable needs.
And places along the way there were
where the smoke was thick and the music loud
and women whose hair was almost gold,
but their needs weren't what I thought they'd be.

Two roads diverged in a winter woods
and one, a crosstrack, curving back
to the splitting road where I'd first begun
held me a moment, but by then I knew
that the woods was fissured with spidery trails,
and my legs were heavy with an earned despair,
and none of the paths led anywhere.

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