Thanks for visiting my photos! I'm retired, an amateur photographer intrigued, inspired and beguiled by all the great images on flickr. Home is Portland in the beautiful, wet, green Pacific Northwest.

I rediscovered this poem and couldn't resist quoting part of it. It seems a fitting prologue for photographers.

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

(prologue)

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage

And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,

We Poets of the proud old lineage

Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,-

What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales

Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,

Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,

And winds and shadows fall towards the West:

And there the world's first huge white-bearded kings

In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,

And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,

Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.

James Elroy Flecker