DO YOU LIKE THE ROAD YOU HAVE TAKEN?

I seem incapable of dusting the bookshelves without stopping my chore to withdraw an old loved book and, turning to a familiar page, letting the beautiful words run by my literal vision and through my mental vision. They are like musical notes tuning my day to the proper pitch.

How rich we are to have the thoughts of writers down through the ages trapped for us to ponder, to enjoy, to set our minds aglow with comfort and enjoyment or afire with new thoughts, new visions, and, maybe, even to challenge.

One book that makes me lay my dusting cloth aside every time is "The Poems of Robert Frost." With a smile of amusement I note on the jacket cover the cost of the book, at the time of purchase, was $1.98. 445 pages of lyrics, saying one thing but perhaps meaning another for $1.98!

Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" may still my dust cloth for an hour or so as I take a nearby chair and run the haunting words before my eyes again. Always the same old question arises. Was there a time in my life when the "road" I was traveling forked off in two directions and I, being only one traveler as was Frost, had to make a choice? Did I take the right one? What would the other one have been like?

Frost leaves open the idea that if a choice was made, and he didn't like it, he might backtrack and try the other one but "how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." But I like the idea that he left open the possibility of going back to try the other road in the event the traveler sees that it is the wrong way for him.

Evidently Frost didn't go back to try the "other road." Furthermore, he said the road he chose "made all the difference."

And there's the old question nibbling at my mind again. What difference?

I like to think that the less traveled road he took was a decision to write his thoughts, not only for his own happiness but, perchance, for others. But, who knows, perhaps it was his religious journey, his romantic journey, his lifestyle journey. Somehow his final line regarding the road he took, "and that coupled with all his joyous and has made all the difference," coupled with all his joyous and thoughtful poems leads me to believe he thought he took the right road.

Can you pinpoint any time in your life when you "saw" two roads and had to make a decision?

A time I can think of in my life was when I decided to take the road whereby I would notice the little beauties and joys along the way. I elaborated on this is a published piece, "And God Talked Back," which is too long to go into here. But, like Frost, I can say, "It has made all the difference." Today a lilac bud bulged open enough for me to see there is going to be a purple flower this spring instead of just more green leaves which has been the main crop of this bush heretofore. A house finch, not able to read labels of course, kept pecking away at a sack of unopened sunflower seeds in my porch swing, stopping quite often to sing the sweetest song -- silvery little notes of what a good life this is.

I said that some poets we might challenge. While I like most of Emily Dickinson's sad-happy poems, there is one that gives me pause. In it she intimates that Truth is too dazzling for Man to absorb right straight on, that we must tell it slant and gradually lest every man be blind. Really? Is that what's wrong with Washington today? Must we be told the truth by halves, three-quarters, eighths?

REJOICE!