Paideia: friday flowers: iris

IX (from sonnets - unrealities)
(by e.e. cummings)

this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

today we celebrate the birth date of e.e. cummings, born in 1894. yeah, i know that cummings wasn't against the use of proper capitalization. i'm just in a playful mood. ;-)

white iris at the madrona marsh

but why irises? well, i could come up with some mumbo-jumbo about the iris symbolizing "messengers" and the role of the poet as a type of messenger, but actually it has no reason beyond my whimsy. i wanted to attend a lecture on irises yesterday, but time and travel constraints vetoed the plan. so i dug through my flower photo collection and dug out some irises as a salve to my frustrated desire.

i turn to the treasures of "an angel named imagination."

let's appreciate the beauty of these darling messengers of botanical beauty. . .