and another

Ick. Frost, this morning, and not the pretty, Jack Frost kind that patterns up your window pane. We're talking thick, obnoxious, cold frost that coats the grass thick and makes it crunchy and lies like an icy blanket on your car window until after 10:30 a.m., waiting for you to take a credit card to it because your real ice scraper is in the other car (why?), tucked away in your mum's garage, three blocks away.

Yeah.

I'll spare you the diatribe about my fingers, slicing through the brittle air on my jog this morning. It's enough that you know.

I am going somewhere with this, btw. I think this morning was the first frost. It was certainly the first that was still around by the time I unglued myself from the computer (there since 5 a.m.!) and ventured outside. So instead of the poem I PLANNED to share with you today (John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn), I figured it was only appropriate to post some, err, Frost. Robert Frost.

Now, the ultimate would be something like An Old Man's Winter Night, because it actually talks about frost (Frost on frost, you could say - how cool is that? And I mean that literally?). However, it does nothing for me so we're going to go with The Road Not Taken - which isn't actually one of my Top 7 (or even 10) but I went on the nicest walk this afternoon in Mission Creek Park with a new friend and we just randomly selected pathways to take so, you know, it kind of fits. N'est pas?

Perhaps it will inspire a walk of your own.

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.