Te Amo

Forgive me for yet another foto of my birthday flowers, but I so rarely receive flowers and when I do I feel overwhelmingly compelled to photograph them. Flowers are one of my favorite subjects - they are just too beautiful and when photographed upclose you see so many more colors and textures than you ever would notice with your naked eye.

"Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet;
...No roving foot shall crush thee here,
...No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the gaurdian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
...Thus quietly thy summer goes,
...Thy days declinging to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
...Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
...Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evenign dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
...The space between, is but an hour,
...The frail duration of a flower. "
-Philip Freneau