Urban Poems

04/16/2026

5 Pallas cats in their natural habitat, very difficult to photograph...😽

04/12/2026

Alley Cats

They stood like men, too eager
to pursue their direction next
to rain gutters soaking in residue
from homeless camps.
Alley cats scamper leaving the compound,
causing a rattling disturbance
of trash bins rocking in almost
a cradling motion several times
before quieting.
What frightens them through thin
walls and spare rooms?
Swarms leave modest grounds
where grasshoppers stir,
sleepy willows tilt their bodies,
and horn frogs leap in murky streams.

Janene Daniel

03/16/2026

The road ran into an ocean of clouds 🌊☁️
📍 Stavanger, Norway 🇳🇴

01/28/2026

01/25/2026

Soft light across the water 🩷🌕

01/23/2026

"The Road Not Taken" is one of Frost's most popular works. Yet, it is a frequently misunderstood poem, often read simply as a poem that champions the idea of "following your own path". Actually, it expresses some irony regarding such an idea. A critique in the Paris Review by David Orr described the misunderstanding this way:
"The poem's speaker tells us he "shall be telling", at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled … yet he has already admitted that the two paths "equally lay / In leaves" and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable."
Frost wrote the poem as a joke for his friend Edward Thomas, who was often indecisive about which route to take when the two went walking.
A New York Times book review on Brian Hall's 2008 biography Fall of Frost states: "Whichever way they go, they're sure to miss something good on the other path." Regarding the "sigh" that is mentioned in the last stanza, it may be seen as an expression of regret or of satisfaction. However, there is significance in the difference between what the speaker has just said of the two roads, and what he will say in the future. According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost's biographer, as Frost was once about to read the poem, he commented to his audience, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem—very tricky", perhaps intending to suggest the poem's ironic possibilities.
Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected." Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."

01/23/2026

Some mountains look like they’re never going to move. ⛰️

The diagnosis.
The debt.
The broken relationship.
The habit you can’t seem to shake.

It’s easy to feel small standing in front of it—but the good news is, the mountain doesn’t bow to your strength.

It bows to your God’s. 🕊️

You don’t have to be the strongest in the story, just the one who keeps walking with Him.

One prayer, one step, one day at a time.

01/23/2026

Tranquility 🩵☁️🩶✨

01/21/2026

Stunning golden sunset 🧡

07/21/2025

Beautiful 🧡