Happy New Year y’all. I hope this is a year of sanctuary, and shared values, surrounded by friends and loved ones.

So one of my goals last year was to read 1000 poems. I…I didn’t make it. I didn’t meet that goal.

So I’m going to try it again this year, but instead of posting the poems, I’ll just list them.

I don’t know what the year is going to hold, so the goal for my books is modest, just 2 a month. I set a goal of 16 books for 2024. I set it on November 6th. But I also had other goals. I was conflicted.I think I reached 12 books in the last 7 weeks of the year.

Anyhow. Watch this space for those 1000 poems and 24 books.

That said, the first poem of the year:

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

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.