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| Rosa 'Charles de Mills' - 1 June 2024 |
Because I was a magazine photographer for at least 43 years,
and I had to photograph people from the arts, sports, politics, cinema, etc, I
gained knowledge of what these people did. I had to research them before I photographed them.
Now when I scan my plants, which I have been doing since 2001, I am absorbing knowledge thanks to the fact that I live in this 21st century. I no longer have to go to the library to do research with the card catalogue.
The plants themselves, especially the roses with their names of people of the past and the present, give me the curiousity to find out who they are. My Galaxy 5 is my personal card catalogue.
I have been mating my photographs with my favourite literature (poems, too) now since 2001. Of red roses I have mined the internet and repeated often the Borges poem that mentions a red rose. I have gone to other writers including Julio Cortázar and Emily Dickinson.
What this means is that the older I get the more literate I have become. Unfortunately I have never been invited to a book club nor do I know anybody now willing to compare notes with me on the poems (I know almost all of them) of Emily Dickinson and Jorge Luís Borges.
Today I wanted to find an excuse to scan these lovely deep red bloom of one of my favourite roses, Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’.
I found today, courtesy of my Galaxy 5, this Robert Burns
poem which is a love poem. I thought of Rosemary when I read it and only in the last few years did I come to understand the rose part of her lovely name. Unlike Burns, neither Rosemary or I believed we would ever meet again. I feel that loss every minute of my waking life.
A Red, Red Rose
BY ROBERT BURNS
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
