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| Rosa 'Buttercup' - 8 July 2024 |
Of Bronze — and Blaze —
The North — tonight —
So adequate — it forms —
So preconcerted with itself —
So distant — to alarms —
An Unconcern so sovreign
To Universe, or me —
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty —
Till I take vaster attitudes —
And strut opon my stem —
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them —
My Splendors, are Menagerie —
But their Competeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass —
Whom none but Daisies — know. Emily Dickinson
In my garden I perceive beauty every day. I perceive a beauty I cannot seem to share since Rosemary died on 8 December 2020. My roses, especially, are trees that fall in a forest where I am the only beholder.
I have been reflecting on my plant scans, which I call scanographs. They make me be a scanographer. By noticing their beauty I enrich my personal life. It is of no consequence if nobody else notices “my pics”.
I have some big printed inkjets of my plant scans in my living room. People tell me they like my photographs. When I tell them that they are not photographs they turn around and lose interest.
Since I have been scanning plants, beginning in the summer of
2001, I have become very good at it. Doing the scans seems easy even when I
fiddle with leaves. I now realize that the action of scanning is no different
from watching a film on Netflix (I never do that). It is plain fun.
Best of all, is to see Rosa ‘Buttercup’ and be reminded of a lovely poem by Emily Dickinson that has the word copper. In other times I have used this other Dickinson poem when I scan a yellow flower or hosta leaf. Also this one by Robert Frost.
Yellow she affords - Emily Dickinson
Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost
And more fun and why not?
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| Rosemary & Alexandra 1969 & Hosta 'El Niño' |