Sometimes just sitting and working things make their way into your conscious mind.  Who knows from where the come.  It could be anywhere.  A look across the table, a penny lying in the street, a particularly intricate spiderweb covered in dew, a word, the sound of a plane overhead or a vivid dream recalled from the night before.

I’m never sure where seemingly random thoughts come from, but like a song that plays over and over in your head appearing from nowhere, thoughts have a way of doing the same.  It’s not at all uncommon for me to have a phrase, a sentence or a poem repeating in my head.  At times for days on end.  Sometimes they are my own word groupings begging to be laid out on paper.  Sometimes they’re things I’ve read or heard in years past.

This morning as I walked down the street basking in the October chill soaking through my jeans and jacket, I couldn’t shake the last three lines of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

They play over and over in my head.  Maybe it’s because that was one of the first poems I, like so many others, learned when I first started exploring poetry.  Frost was accessible and his poems were real, his words tangible so he was a natural stepping stone – a safe house – from which I could delve into a world of fascinating observations and rhythm.

Maybe it’s because the streets today were calm, quiet and covered with freshly fallen leaves upon which no one had yet stepped.  Maybe it’s the crisp fall air in general.  Or maybe it’s all the changes I face each day in life.

All the roads, new and old alike, upon which I may yet tread.