Two Simple Roads
Robert Frost was a fine
mathematician. He reduced
his fractions efficiently
down to two roads in one
wood. Modern. Scientific.
Beautiful. Binary reductionism
and poetic refuge denying
or avoiding quantum chaos
and the probability of
improbability of organic
human irrationality which
is not a four letter word
but offensive anyway
because rational thinking
is key to science, our
modern religion, and
“irrational” sounds bad,
a label for mystics and
poets, when what I mean
to say is simply that every
one wants a forked road:
left, right, even if you
take the scarecrow’s
direction in Oz – both –
you still only have three
options for travel.
The last time I was in
a wood, there was a
labyrinth, Bowie and all,
that appeared – hall of
mirrors, trap doors, secret
passages – with a hundred
entrances, billion exits,
chess problem with no
solution, and people
raced back and forth –
no somber, solitary,
reflective forest this,
dominated by climate
control, astroturf, pine
scent, exposing the reality
of Frost’s apparent fifty-
fifty game, clearly all
or nothing in truth,
this modern mathematical
ruse to deny the beautiful
array, meticulous matrix
of maddening possibility
available from one step.
I stuck out my foot
to trip a passerby, then
meandered aimlessly
into the woods, foot
following foot today.
(published by Dirty Chai Magazine)
