My dear friend Dorothy Walters gave me two MAJOR gifts today. One is a poem she posted on her blog, "Kundalini Splendor" last Sunday. The other is her finding within those stanzas the perfect title for my self portraits/daily life book project. When/if my book is published, Dorothy's poem will introduce it and the title will be "A Different Frame: self portraits." I feel her poem speaks not just of me but of so many of us for whom photography is our life. I bet you'll recognize yourself in it...

The Photographer
(for Patricia)

She has transcended body,
left it behind.
She lives in a brain-ferment,
a buzzing hive of mind,
a tossing sea of perception.

She gathers fragments
of the presented world
and translates them
into a new medium,
a cosmos of images
held in a different frame.

In this uncovered order sun
and darkness meet,
old and unaccustomed bleed into
one another's space.

She is the eternal creator,
eyeing, composing, unmaking,
turning life over
into new soil,
new beginnings,
unexpected revelation.

Dorothy Walters
August 9, 2008