Poppies

                     

Armistice Day on eleventh of November

Was often bleak and mournful Pre empting winter

The skies of French Flanders remembered and crying

Watered those bloody fields where flowers were lacking

Came spring when the poppies in fallow ground abound

Sad thoughts were put aside. Emerging from the ground

Were crops generating labour income and food

Enough to meet the needs of farmers and their brood

But poppies “Down Under” at Anzac services

Tell our generation that war and its vices

Has laid a heavy toll on those once Dominions

The men who left brightly to help other nations

If indeed they returned were by then the wiser

They ignored the glory some of them were bitter

The poppy that they wore was not their reminder

It spoke for those fallen in the fields of Flanders

On April twenty fifth at church or cenotaph

Poppies are tied in wreaths a floral epitaph

For those who went away and remained in the land

Where they fell far from home so that others could stand

Wild poppies never sown you wilt to resurrect

In the following year plentiful and erect

You waver in the wind you bow and rise again

In homage to soldiers who didn’t die in vain

Thérèse Miller- Beudaert