The Road Most Traveled

Robert Frost's farm waits for me,
a picture post card
of calm green pastures
and pristine white fence posts.
The image floats behind
my retinas, shimmering there.

From the corner of my eye
my peripheral vision
caught it, an unlikely mirage,
a hopeful snapshot,
in my mad dash from ice rink
to ice rink.

My husband once promised me,
in lovelocked words,
"I'll take you to New England,
to see where they wrote,
what they wrote--
why they wrote."

So many years later,
four children later,
life and death
and much inbetween later,
we are here
to watch my daughter skate.

She is a beautiful girl,
her brownstreaked hair
hidden by a hard hat;
she flies from blue line
to blue line, around and
around the rink,
her skates first puncturing,
then lacerating the ice.

I know now
that with each stroke
she was waiting
for something else to happen,
like so many others
before her.

That day on the road
in New Hampshire,
we stumbled upon the farm.
No gates, no billboards--
Could it be just here,
so greenly unassuming
only steps from Rt. 76?

We piled out of the van
onto the side of the road,
the gently curving farm
just before us.
The gravel pushing through
my flip flops,
I felt the pull.

I could feel him there,
beckoning, as I gazed up
into the second story window.
He was in the field, thinking,
writing, just over the crest.

I could write here,
I thought. Here,
the words would tumble
in a freefall for me.
Sitting on the porch,
I would begin to spin a tale.

"We'll come back,"
my husband promises.
"Tomorrow."
As if fenced, I never leave
my graveled spot to step
onto the grass
that is Robert Frost's farm.