The poem appears to be a simple conversation between a husband and wife strolling along the bank of a meandering stream in southern New Hampshire and ascends quickly into a dense and formidable discussion on existence. “West-Running Brook” uses the metaphor of a tiny stream whose current mysteriously runs counter to the directions of other streams as an opportunity to explore the nature of nature itself; the dynamics of relationships, particularly marriage; and ultimately the working of the cosmos.

The poem begins simply enough—the wife is lost. For the transcendentalists, who greatly influenced Frost, getting lost is regarded as the first step in enlightenment. Here is no exception. The husband assures his wife they are not lost—they need only follow the brook that, he knows, runs west. Here the wife raises the question that will serve as the starting point for her husband’s philosophical disquisition: why does this single stream flow westward when all the other streams nearby flow naturally toward the open ocean. This stream runs west, conventionally a direction associated with the movement toward sunset, toward night, ultimately toward death, the natural and inevitable flow of each person hopelessly caught in the flow of time itself.