As Frost penned, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference". Frost wasn't a complex /ambiguous poet, but his writes certainly left one to think and ponder and reflect on all the "Simple Truths" we share and ultimately take for granted. I'd like to thank the contributions to my recent contest for taking me, and others, on paths we hadn't yet traveled. We've alluded to showing and telling in writing, and even one as vociferous as I, finds it difficult to describe what they show so well. Suzette's "Recombobulating Chaos" was the best poem I've read all year (perhaps more) ... this write is "showing" at its best. Some might question why I might choose this over Sam Kauffman’s “A Sitka Sunset” write, when it was clearly the most researched and descriptively creative representation of the contest’s inspiration. Admittedly, I was drawn into Sam’s write, as I am to must of Sam’s art, but to me, it is more “Telling”, beautiful telling – but telling. If I were she, I would definitely consider sending her write to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce for use in a travel brochure because it is excellent and please take that as a compliment! Suzette’s “Recombobulating Chaos”, first was a repurpose of a word I used in the contest description (clever), and then it became almost a voyeuristic journey – an affair with the sunset if you will? It is seductive like a semitransparent negligee. It temps and hints – no colors are mentioned yet we still see them, and no emotions are mentioned except jealousy, but we feel them and then are left wondering what just happened…hope is was good for you too. Charlotte’s “Our Last Sunset” – don’t ya just hate the word “Last” – or the feel of it! Why can sadness sometimes be so beautiful, perhaps it is because it’s the end of something that was? Charlotte, perhaps, takes us to the end of that affair that Suzette started hmm. Love how she equated the sunset in a daydream like haze on “the blush-flushed cusp of night” where ”the brittle dry driftwood of halting words” float out … We can feel this goodbye because we’ve all felt them before. Is this simply about a sunset or any sad and beautiful ending? WJ Clarke chose to Show by equating the sunset to a Blues song, an end of day performance where we actually are feeling what we’re seeing – the colors, the sunset “an instrument without strings” – yes – Miles Davis would think this was “Cool” – I did. Kim Rodrigues did such a fine recreation of the feel with no wasted words and was truly “Soothing to the mind”, and the personification of “I just wish I could lean on the mountain tops” and “tap my toe in puddles on rooftops”, “Sweet milk splashed with sighs” is where a pen becomes magical. Segrid Ermine had a true potpourri of thoughts that, at first was overwhelming, but on multiple reads, started to come more into focus and I truly love the use of spices to incite color. As we approach July 4th, her poem is a fireworks of expressive thoughts or exploding pumpkins! I wouldn’t be surprised if Segrid loves to cook as well (I do). Frederic seems to always have a way to calm a sea, and he does so in his “Sitka Sunset” and softly influences the scene until “The sun disappears with the red-threaded horizon”. Which brings us back to Robert Frost, “Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see into the future – let what will be, be.”