A bit of inspiration

The first day of the year is always a good day to watch movies as almost everything, even in NYC, is closed. I think it's some sort of unsaid national holiday-everyone needs the day to recover from the festivities.

Last night I took the time to watch the new Denzel Washington movie, The Great Debaters. It was a so-so movie but the movie inspired me to check out some poetry by Langston Hughes. There is a scene in the movie where Denzel stands up on the chair in front of the class he is teaching and recites one of Hughes' more famous poems, I too, am America. It's a short but very important American poem.

Poetry has always been a side passion of mine and through the power of the internet and the wonderful power of google, I not only checked out Langston Hughes but tried to remember some poems I memorized during my grammar school years. Of course when we were pre-teens all meaning was lost on our inability to process emotion. There aren't enough years to experience the meaning behind the poems.

I digress as usual. During my google search I came across some of Robert Frost's work and became reacquainted with a poem that resignates with me more now than it did before.

Check this poem out.

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.

It does make all the difference.