POEMS/ Counter-factuals; or what it would have been like if Frost had not taken the road less traveled by

Counter-factuals;
or what it would have been like
if Frost had not taken the road less traveled by
At the end of the road not taken
lies a well-built wall that never falls
to elves, but there are no good neighbors,
a wall that’s shaded by unbending birches
that boys can never swing on,
no thrush song in a woods that’s full of sun,
a housekeeper who never has to sew,
and there’s an Oven Bird who teaches
of a world that’s undiminished,
a spider web, that by design,
cannot appall, and cannot catch
a moth, a buzz-saw far too dull
to slice a hand, a brook that runs from East to West
beside a farm where children never
lie in little graveyards built of stone
and husbands always understand
our grief, a hired man who does not
come to die, a woods of snow
where a man and a horse go home to sleep,
no miles and miles to go, or promises to keep,
an orchard where the picking never stops
and pickers never tire, a world where there’s a poet
who cannot form directives or provide,
and lines and lines of poetry that never come to be.
From The Still Puddle Poets: New Poems, 2008