August 22, 2013 - Pocket Compass

And old friend brought me back

a gift

from a market in Afghanistan -

a brass pocket compass with

a poem

inscribed in the screw-on cover -

it’s final verse (engraved

in words

too small for eyes to read) reads:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the on less traveled by,

and that has made all the difference.”