On second thought...

Let us examine this a little more closely. Perhaps Papy Biou’s photograph from yesterday’s post is not married to Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” which begins, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” after all. There are differences.

First of all, there is only one road in the photograph, not two roads. Second of all, the trees are green, not yellow. The season is obviously spring or summer, not autumn at all. But the flowers are yellow. Still, when I saw the photograph, my mind went immediately to Frost’s poem. But the season of the year, I think, is really immaterial.

I picture myself as the observer, standing at the very spot where the roads diverge. Two trails, two different destinations. One road, the route on my right, is not even part of the picture. When I turn my head, however, and look to my left, there is Papy’s road. The scene beckons to me. It is tantalizing. A variety of blues beyond the leaves hint of a calm lake, a rugged hill, a clear sky. I can see quite a distance down the road, all the way to the place where it bends in the undergrowth and continues on its way to a destination I will never know. Because I have chosen to take the other road, which is actually the less-traveled one, I may have missed something wonderful, something life-changing, something I may always be sorry I missed, if only I knew what it was. But I have made my choice. I turn to the right and take the other road with its own unique set of possibilities and destinations.

Life is like that. You can’t do it all. No one can. All you can do is make choices daily and hope for the best.

The marriage of words and picture

I was looking through some of Michel Soultane’s photographs this morning (Michel is my French blogger friend, Papy Biou) when one reached out and spoke to me. “Pick me,” it said quietly. “I will help you make a memorable post.”

The scene was somewhere in the part of France where Michel/Papy lives, but it made me think of one of my favorite American poems, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, right down to the bend in the road. Frost, who lived from 1874 to 1963, is remembered for his descriptions of rural New England; he wrote “The Road Not Taken” in 1920. The poem is so well-known that it is practically a cliché, but I love it nonetheless. If it is new to you, now is a good time to learn it, tuck it away in your memory, and wait for it and the photograph to do their work. Here is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (and thank you, Papy, once again, for the photograph):


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.