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My copy of Robert Frost's book of poetry, "The Road Not Taken", has a worn and tattered dust-jacket. It bears the honorable scars of many years of use, the transportation dings through several moves, and the over-eagerness of my children's young hands. And yet, as many times as I've read through it, I never feel I've read through it nearly enough.
One of many favorites is the poem "Two tramps in mud time". There are many joys to be found in this piece of nine verses of eight lines each ... typically "Frostian" with it's pithy observations on people and life. It also ends with one of my favorite quotes of all time:
"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."
I capture more words these days (in my professional work) than I capture images, and in those words I need to convey knowledge, insight, and the joy of life and learning. In many ways the writing is not so different from what I do when I work with a camera. But through all my labors, either written with the keyboard or in the images I create, I try to keep Frost's object in living first and foremost.
rNeil
