Our final steps
are never meant to be
one step on the moon
or a leap for mankind.

It was your memory,
intangible.
metaphysically physical
synaptically existing.

My mother's
mothering
mother, Bernice.

or

A lover's
loving
love, Helena.

or

Writer's
writing
wrote, poems.

We can be strangers if you like
We can talk about the weather
Our silly plans for the weekend
Or how life has been kind to us
Trust me, I'm a terrific actor
You'll hardly be able to tell

We can be strangers if you like
Or at least we can pretend that
It doesn't shred us to pieces...

this mad gristle flays itself
against the rigid
pyres of the stars;
it is lean, supple,
newmouthed and
hardly born;

It has trembled in the
arms of a woman,

and eaten of the fetal
apple--

stringent, stretched sticky
between the fingers
like a lung.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

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.