Post #4 from our Easter week in Burgundy.

Pull on your old jacket and your rubber boots. The weather is undecided and last night’s rain has left things saturated with wetness and a deeper hue. The snails and slugs will be crossing our path, hoof marks will be fresh and deep if we spot any.

Leave with empty pockets; they will be full when you come home. The heart-shaped stone, the futuristic seed pod, the purple wildflower which will inevitably wilt but who cares?—these things will fascinate our eyes and seduce our fingers. We will pluck them up hoping that doing so will help us remember…

On one side, the fields with their lovely symmetry rise toward a stand of trees and continue ad infinitum out of sight. On the other, parallel to our path, run the railroad tracks where we left the penny last year, hoping to see it flattened by the passing train.

Ahead of us and behind us, the reason for our outing: Two parallel paths, two dirt ruts– the doing of the farmer’s tractor. Impossible not to heed their call. Impossible not to put down computers, books, all those things that make us busy and occupied, and instead pick up the leash and call the dog. Our legs were made for walking, and this is our chance. Two dirt ruts. Side by side and forever parallel. One for me, one for you. Are you coming? Say, “Yes.” If poems speak the truth, it will make all the difference.

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 marked 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.

—Roberto Frost