15 January 2013

Competition Disposition


Last year I won the first place gold medal prize from World Poetry Movement. Recently I got an email requesting a submission for this year. I looked thru the poems I had written in 2012 and narrowed my choice down to three: Afternoon Swoon, Resident's Absence and View Adieu.


Competition Disposition
Original by Robert Frost
14 January 2013

Three poems lay on my desk of wood
And sorry I could not submit them all,
Limited to one entry as I understood,
I read them and thought as hard as I could
About which to send in answer to the call.

Each having its own rhythm and rhyme
And all equally appealing
As suited to the subject and paradigm
Of a requested poem at this time,
My quandary proved to be revealing.

The more I looked the less I was sure
Of which was the best to submit
And which one had the most allure.
So I tried the familiar procedure
Of asking the people most proximate.

I shall be telling with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Three poems lay on wood and I --
I used my own judgement to go by
And that has made all the difference.
_______________________________

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1920)

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.

1 comment :

  1. Hi Al:

    Interesting exercise. Frost is my fav poet, and I enjoyed reading your rhyming re-write. Very skillful.

    ReplyDelete