Red Flower

A poem written in the shadow of war, looking back at the last summer of peace. Van Dyke captures a single flower in bloom, the warmth of a day that now feels impossibly distant - because he knew what was coming. The red flower becomes something heartbreaking: beauty that doesn't know it's about to be destroyed, innocence standing next to the abyss. Written after the outbreak of World War I but set before it, this is a lament for a world that ended in 1914. The poem moves through a summer garden with tender precision, then turns toward the horizon where smoke and ash will soon rise. It's both a love letter to a lost world and a grief cry for millions who would never see another summer like it. For readers who cherish poetry that aches, that knows the cost of what it describes. For anyone who has ever looked at something beautiful and understood, with sudden sharp grief, that it couldn't last.