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."

All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar unless otherwise attributed