‘A poem … begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness…. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”
Robert Frost (1874-1963), U.S. poet. letter, Jan. 1, 1916, to poet and anthologist Louis Untermeyer. The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
I am sticking with the classics. As a born and raised New Englander I was raised with Robert Frost. Here is one of my favorites.
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(To hear us talk)
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.
And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole
And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.
Robert Frost