Poetree

How is a poem like designing a landscape? Well, you can write your own metaphors, but the process of creating both is very similar. You take a bunch of inventory items: In the case of a landscape, that would be plants, paving, water, and the like; for a poem, words. Then you put them together. One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." The last 3 lines are the best known:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Okay, let's ruin it. Same words, different arrangement:

In all I took the wood
And a one that has traveled by the less difference.
I diverged and made two roads.

Huh?

A well-designed landscape is more like the original than the second one. Sadly, many seem content with landscapes that are more like the second than the first. Or worse--they can't see the difference.