Trusting the Past

This is the next in my series of poems to consider, to ponder, to examine inwardly and outwardly.  I originally posted the poem back in September.

It is particularly powerful to me right now, as our two boys have reached adulthood.  But if the tree is to be judged by it's fruit, then perhaps we didn't saddle them with too many albatrosses.

I first read this poem three years ago, yet I continue to think of it often.  I love how it changes our understanding of time... for the way it turns our wistful gaze into the future into a reflective assessment of our humanness, our incompleteness, our gullibility.  Yet, like the ancient mariner, we made the best decisions we could for that time and in that place.  We pray the past will serve us well.

Yes, old Frost, I chose the roads to take in the past.  For this journey called life is a map-less exploration of dark woods and meandering streams.  One must navigate by head and heart... and I tended to take the road less traveled, and that has certainly "made all the difference".

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Thanks, Robert Frost by David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought...
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.