Wildflowers in the gloaming

   

   

Flower Gathering

By Robert Frost

I LEFT you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?

All for me And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.

I gathered pictures of wildflowers while visiting my parents’ farm last week.  This bittersweet poem, as so many of Frost’s are, makes me think of the farm, but also of my parents, who are aging.  I know I won’t have them long.  They are fading flowers now, and, like the wildflowers, not infinite.  Going “home” to the farm always makes me feel like I’m trapped between memories of growing up there and the realization of my parents growing old there.  The farm is not like a bug forever preserved in amber.  Every time I visit, I notice changes.  The farm is aging.  Trees that were once small are grown tall.  Trees that were once tall have fallen down.  The pond is no longer as large I as I remember it.  The hills no longer as high. Of course, that is because I have grown.  Grown up and grown away.  But the sky is still  quite blue, and the meadows quite verdant.  I know I will not have my parents forever, and perhaps, some day, the farm itself will pass out of the family.  But the wildflowers I have captured here, with the pictures from my digital camera, will always be mine for the measure – worth to treasure.  Memories that, I hope, will never fade.

~Thanks!