Summer Hill, Colorado

Robert Browning has this line in one of his poems:
      What I aspired to be
      And was not, comforts me.
I resonate with his words.
I once aspired to be a very competent minister and preacher,
      and by my twenties and thirties, that’s what I was becoming.
There came a time, however, when I realized with sadness
      that the work which once felt so freeing had come to feel imprisoning.
So I decided reluctantly, painfully, to leave that aspiration behind.
Today my work is totally different.
I fly, for example, to Colorado with my cameras
      and stand before a hill outfitted in bright yellow flowers.
When what I see asks to have its picture made, I do so.
Such photographs come, in time, to illustrate the poetry of the Sufi poet Rumi,
      to communicate hope in a book for those in grief,
            to convey a sense of sacredness in a presentation for caregivers,
                  and to bring a message about the created world in a framed print.
Had I clung to my honest, deeply felt aspirations,
      I would never have known the naturalness of
            making photography and writing
                  the lifework it has become for me.
Today, looking back, I am comforted.