or, Passing Through Twisp on a Snowy Evening
with more than a passing nod to Frost
Bound for Carlton on Mid-fall’s Day
I trailed a train of cars in chains
thrashing through a drifting snow.
Rainy Pass had shut behind.
(Early Winters is aptly named
as three long fortnights yet remained
afore the formal end of Autumn;
Boreas, though, there oft pre-empts.)
Through laboring blades and fading light
my windscreen’s view revealed at right
a barn for buses frost-encased
and then a sign: Twisp-Carlton Road.
Two rutted roads diverged just there:
the leftward went I knew not where;
the right, at least, ran Carlton down.
An instant’s pick must needs been gat.
I chose alas! the signéd road
and it has all the difference made.
O! Had I known the two re-verged
great grief and pain had I waylain.