The Trails Not Taken

By Bohdan Sirant, 2011 Dedicated to Canadian volunteers who fought in the Vietnam war. Inspired by, and after, with respect, gratitude and apologies to Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken Two trails diverged in the lush and wildly verdant bush and happy we were to skirt a likely ambush We would travel neither nor split the platoon We briefly knelt down on the musty mush and looked down one scanning for tripwires anything disturbed out of place, or unusual searching as far as we could to where it turned in the bamboo underwood Then looked down the other just as weirdly fair looking for booby traps spider holes, enemy lair or other signs of VC there It had no better claim it was also wet and didnt need more wear cause black-clad Red Vandals wearing tire-tread sandals traveling at night by the flickering light of candles passing there after a Monsoon rain had worn it out just about the same And both trails that noon shaded in tropical gloom lay equally covered In twiggy jungle hay that

two or three companies humping supplies and munitions had trodden olive grey under most difficult conditions We wisely kept both trails for the next Saint Nevers Day! Knowing how Mr. Charles tricky way would lead to a wickedly fatal one-sided play Now without a doubt we knew we had to find a safer byway out We may remember this with a rush of glee or shudder and sigh of relief or soft-spoken, sacred word somewhere decades hence Two trails diverged in a jungle and our little herd to avoid death, grief and a tragic bungle traveled neither ready trail and thus lived to tell the tale for in that dire instance we blazed a third trail A trail of trial and travail and roundabout distance through virgin bush, hill and vale, far round common ford and emerald glade to outflank the VC horde lest we fall victim to an all-out raid A trail of survival, but a trail we ourselves cut and with Claymores mined for wily Chuck to sometime try A new trail never yet traveled by And that made all the difference