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Attempt the Impossible Task!




But nae the less, my sails are set
And my course is by dead reckoning.
It does no good to fear the wet
And a better world is beckoning...  
 
                            Karl Stuart Kline

Waking with Robert Frost

I woke up in the morning of 9/11/2001 with this poetry running circles in my brain...  The last stanza I think would go to another poem...  But this is as far as I got before it was time to go wake up Marina and help her get to her doctors’ appointment at 9 am...  We started hearing about the attack on the World Trade Center on the radio only a few minutes after it happened as we were driving to the doctors’ office.

I may have woken up with Robert Frost, but I went to bed with visions of Dantes’ Inferno! 
Much has happened since I wrote this poem early on what was yet a quiet morning...  I have reread it many times since then, but have not changed it to any great degree...
Except for some minor changes to even out the meter, my final draft is as I first wrote it. 
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Note - the "last stanza" that I referred to here is the epigraph at the top of the page, exactly as it was written that morning.
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I woke up with Robert Frost this morning
 
I woke up with Robert Frost this morning...
with sweep of wind and downy flake
I woke and I could see without warning
His woods as his horse gave his head a shake
 
The road less taken has brought me here
To where I’ve stopped without a farmhouse near
Meditating  on what has brought me to this queer
Circumstance and I pause in solitary fear,
 
I think back to words unsaid and deeds undone
Realising that I am fortunate that they are few...
I can see that my Self is greater than the sum
Of my parts, even though I still have much to do
 
My word is good and my debts are covered.
If I should die tomorrow I’d have few regrets,
Except that I hadn’t seen all the worlds’ wonders
And that I wouldn’t get to see what happens next
 
But it seems that there are still deeds to do,
My little horse has become a fiery steed...
Carrying me in crusade against those who
Bind spirits that should be able to live free
 
Unfortunately, crusaders take some chances,
Whether right or wrong, they’ll meet resentment...
They threaten the status quo with golden lances,
Left broken on the sturdy revetments
 
Of the society that they would wish to change.
For there are those who feel that they’ll be burnt
Since they have much at stake and feel the danger, So they will become dangerous in turn

Copyright 2005 Karl Stuart Kline. All rights reserved.