Stopping by a Woods
(Apologies to Robert Frost)
Stopping By Woods on a Summer Morning*
A surge of energy pervades this woods
As multitudes of insects, beasts and fowl
Of many sizes, shapes, survival modes
Attend to all their daily tasks — patrol
Their borders, seek out caves and hollow logs,
Spin webs, preen fur or feelers, look for mates,
Do courtship rites, make love, give birth, lay eggs,
Devour, excrete, win fights, endure defeats.
But from this road the woods are still: no wails
For loss, no angry snarls, no noxious odors;
There are no vendors’ shouts or hoots from mills;
No screeching brakes, car horns or whirring motors.
The woods —it’s true — are lovely, dark and deep,
Its denizens amazingly discreet,
And seeing now I still need five more feet
I say again, amazingly discreet.
