On February 14, 2017
Photograph © 2016 by Debra Konrad.
© By John Arkelian
“So passeth, in the passing of a day, / Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, / No more doth flourish after first decay, / That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower.”
On Valentine’s Day, our thoughts turn to love, beauty, and the flower: Are we as bewitched by the fragility of a flower as by its beauty? What could be more ephemeral, after all, with petals soft as tissue? Why, mayhap, our own short lives: Buds turn to glorious blooms, the shimmer of our prime draws the eye and the ardent admiration of suitors, and then we fade and pass out of the ken of those we leave behind. But, we endure, in the hearts of those who knew us, and in the realm of the eternal, where nothing that reflects love ever perishes. Floral beauty in abundance is on view in the photography of Debra Konrad, a sampling of which adorns our “About Us” section:
“Gather therefore the rose, whlist yet is prime, / For soon comes age, and that will her pride deflower: / Gather the rose of love, whilst yet is time, / Whist loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.”
Quoted verse is by Edmund Spencer (1522-99) from “The Faerie Queen.”