Happy Birthday, Emily

Today is my daughter’s 23rd birthday and I am thinking back with great fondness on her slow arrival, her cranky babyhood, her effervescent toddlerhood, her drama-filled childhood, her diligent adolescence, her adventurous college-hood, and all the magical moments in between. Happy birthday, Emily. Here is my poem-gift to you today— one of my personal favorites. For an extra treat, you can hear Robert Frost himself read this poem on the web site of the Academy of American Poets (poets.org) at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

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.