THE MOUNTAIN ROAD: award winner

THE MOUNTAIN ROAD


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both.
One bent down, led to the path which would
Take me to the port from where, for good,
I would leave the wood I held in loath.

The other went up and up where stood,
Almost at the far end of the track,
Overlooking the vast yellow wood,
Where hardly any villager would
Visit, a dilapidated shack.

I’d finished studies in the school and
All my friends had decided to go,
In keeping with the usual trend,
Beyond the beach with yellowish sand,
To the port where ships’ loud sirens blow.

As I came where the roads did diverge,
This was the time I had to decide,
Whether to follow my youthful urge,
Or, go back to the old village dirge,
To the shack where my mom did reside.

The road downward led to the port which
Was the hub of much activity.
But the road upward was not so rich.
It held no life there, this was the glitch.
All it had was raw simplicity.

But that’s where lived my widowed mother,
Steeped in daily mountain drudgery,
In which there was no one to help her.
Cruel fate destined her to suffer
A life full of stress and penury.

I probed my heart if the vast blue seas,
Spread till the end of the horizon,
Called me harder than my mother’s pleas,
As she had told me so often, “Please,
I can now no longer live alone”.

And then the truth shone like a bright sun.
Ships would forever in the ports sail,
But mom won’t live ever for the son.
Life’s yarn she had almost fully spun.
In the son’s duty I would not fail.

As roads diverged in a yellow wood,
I knew that I could not travel both.
I also knew that I never could
Leave my mom living in widowhood.
I went up to the shack, held in loath.


• Winner in the “Famous First Words - ROUND TWO OPEN” contest "Invalid Item"  hosted by twyls. As per the prompt, the first two lines of the poem had to be the same as in the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874–1963), which can be viewed at http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html

• Written in abaab rhyme, 9 syllables per line, as in Frost’s poem.


M C Gupta
26 November 2008

NOTE—A reader asked me a question. Here is it, along with my answer:

Q--I read your poem about the mountain. Are you really refering to your mother?

A-- The mountain story was fiction. But, if you substitute the motherland for the mother and the airport for the seaport, then it is factual. I got my US immigrant visa approved in 1973 but decided to stay back in India.]