Many paths in the woods have chosen me, many a time, and I wonder often what this choosing is: a sublime intimation from far outside my consciousness (or for that matter from far inside) or maybe some train of mortality set in motion at my birth (if our instruments of observation were fine and precise enough to trace it) or maybe only disparate appeal, pure chance, the distant drumming of a partridge in spring, the advancing maple-color along a lane in fall, or only that the mud was less thick one way than another was. Free or determined? Again and again I went the one way and not the other, who knows why? I wish I could know. Maybe it would explain the other things that worry me. But I have no compulsive need now, not any longer. What I know is that whether I walked freely or trudged exhausted I chose one way each time and ended by being lost. I think I sought it. I think I could not know myself until I did not know where I was. Then my self-knowledge continued for a while while I found my way again in fear and reluctance, lost truly at last. I changed the appearance of myself to myself continually and losing and finding were the same, as now I understand. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE THAW by HAYDEN CARRUTH FICTION by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON BOOTH'S PHILIPPI by EDGAR LEE MASTERS O GLORIOUS FRANCE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A FRAGMENT by GEORGE GORDON BYRON GRACE FOR CHILDREN by ROBERT HERRICK ODE ON A GRECIAN URN by JOHN KEATS |