Poetry Sunday

One of the things I have to be careful of when I travel is taking so many photographs that I fail to enjoy the experience of the moment.  Another one is taking all the pictures ... and then realizing that I'm not in any of them. This poem by Wendell Berry sums up the problem of the over-absorbed photographer ...

The Vacation

by Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.


Have a good day. And be in it.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo