“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.



Photo c redit: Stanley Crook, the Wolsingham road taken from the junction with the B6299 by Chris Huff, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Age 52: Electric Boogaloo.

Workin’ on those gray streaks like Hunter Rose.


“The Kiss Of The Siren,” Gustav Wertheimer, 19th Century

“I survived a nail trim.”

This item at a Roanoke pastry shop reads “I survived a nail trim.”

There’s a lesson here for writers, though – if you’re unsure of your font or word spacing, ass a friend.



“The Young Man” from “Basel’s Dance of Death” by Matthäus Merian, 17th Century

“Would you like to know more?”

Cover to Slowdive’s “Golden Hair” (Live) single, 2019

Sonic Cathedral.

SmithaV awarded August 2024 Publication of the Month by Spillwords Press.

I hope you will join me in congratulating SmithaV for being awarded Spillwords Press Publication of the Month for August 2024.  You can find her wonderful poem “Empty Lines” right here.

(Thanks also to those of you who voted for me in the contest.  I certainly appreciate it.)



Variant cover “Batman Incorporated” #12, Guillem March, 2013

DC Comics.

If there is an emblem for bachelorhood, I’m pretty sure this is it.

It’s like the Westerosi sigil for House Unmarried.  (A delicious sigil.)

But, damn, I miss the baked mac-and-cheese served at Mary Washington College.  I know I’m not the only one.



Nurse Your Favorite Heresies in Whispers