Thursday, October 06, 2022

Poem for Thursday and Ballard Locks Gardens

Autumn Flowers
By Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

O crimson-tined flowers
That live when others die,
What thoughtless hand unloving
Could ever pass you by?

You are the last bright blossoms,
The summer's after-glow,
When all her early children
Have faded long ago.

Sweet golden-rod and xenia
And crimson marigold,
What dreams of autumn splendor
Your velvet leaves unfold.

Long, long ago the violets
Have closed their sweet blue eyes,
And lain with pale, dead faces
Beneath the summer skies.

And on their graves you blossom
With leaves of gold and red,
And yet--how soon forever
Your beauty will be fled.

The frost will come to kill you
The snows will wrap you round;
And you will sleep forgotten
Upon the frozen ground.

Your tints are like the beauty
The sunlight leaves behind,
And deep and full of sadness
The thoughts you bring to mind.

Dear memories of the summer!
Sweet tokens of the past!
You are the fairest flowers
Because you are the last.

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Another quickie during the second half of The Return of the King extended edition with Cheryl and Paul (I'm not crying, you're crying). It was otherwise a fairly standard pandemic-era Wednesday with a touch of Yom Kippur, though only in the form of reading; I did not even fast.

I talked at lunchtime to the two of my three good high school friends who aren't Jewish, and I saw the first Halloween decorations around the neighborhood. We had Trader Joe's butternut squash macaroni for dinner, which is delicious. From the gardens at Hiram Chittenden/Ballard Locks in Seattle: 

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