Lawyers Road Review

By Robert Frost

In this bit of a lawyer’s road review I wish to dedicate this poem to our daughter Rachel J. Patterson.

Most of us from around these parts graduate from High School, maybe go to college but nearly always return to the headwaters of our family origin, a town a lot like Everett or Lynnwood. The horizon is definite; a cradle to grave existence appears pre-ordained.

Rachel had other ideas. That horizon has been defeated. Today she works at the White House. It is a road few take, and that has made all the difference.

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.

At the Washington Nationals Game.