#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Common Arrowhead
Cardinal Flower
The river is high, the wetlands are too. Happily, the wildflowers are thriving in the swamp and marsh and wetlands of Charles River woods and streams. August blooms are lovely today; Arrowhead blooms in profusion at the edge of the swamp. I slide down an embankment from the railroad tracks to see what I'll find around the stream that runs beneath them. There, in the midst of the trickling water, cardinal flower blooms gloriously. Later, I found this video of a poem, The Cardinal Flower, by Thomas Parker Sanborn (1865-1889) and fell in love with the background recording of "Ashokan Farewell."
“Upon the bank the deep-red flower shone,
Amid the autumn grass, embrowned and sere;
A tiny dew-drop sparkled thereupon
In semblance of a tear.
Above, a flock of tardy birds took flight
Unto the meadows of a sunnier clime;
And in the west gathered the gloomy night,—
The night of autumn time.
Beside the river, flowing to the sea,
Made low lament, blown over by the breeze,
For summer’s death; and the same threnody
Sang the wind-shaken trees.
I did not pluck the flower that bloomed so fair,
But left it bannerwise, to swing and wave;
To fade, and mingle with the wan grass there,
Over September’s grave.”
All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar unless otherwise attributed