Spring poppies
Lines in italics refer to Siegfried Sassoon's poem Does it matter? A poem that has always stuck to my mind
As their pipes back their yells
going over the top,
I sit naked in the wind
looking out over those fields
where each spring still
poppies cry out for their spilled  blood.
They haunt my dreams to make me
remember lest I forget
to be eternally grateful.
I sit naked in the wind
to feel their souls
as an initiation to change
my own fate
(never too late),
because they never had the chance.
The winds bring words
to my haunted heart,
to remember that
it does matter
losing a leg,
losing sight (black nightmares).
Poppies weather the winds
however fragile they seem,
so I will weather them too
and ask the Lady of the Broom
to be gentle to the lost ones,
the broken lines.
I have silence in my mind,
slowly healing all hurts,
and turn my face to the light.
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Comments
Bloody Awesome!!! I have no clue what to say, John, this one just blew me away. I get a strange feeling from this write. Calming nature, but get a sense of loneliness and a deeply unsettling feeling... A veteran of war... Very very clever... Powerful write John... Pinned!!
Hi, max. Thank you. it is a poem that has been waiting to be written ever since I did First World War Poetry at University (I think first semester 1987). It has always hit me hard, WWI and other war shit - probably also because of the experiences of my parents in WWII (a heavy bombing of the neighbourhood by the Germans the day after liberation, my mother could not get home in time and had ti live through those thirty minutes or so in the street, my father lost three friends when the house they were sheltering in was completely destroyed by a German bomb). I always hurt when I see images of the trenches (or pass the region in the North of France where the trenches were - about once a year going on a holiday). It makes me realize how lucky I am to be alive now and not in the trenches. Whatever you study, don't read war poetry: either it is crazily nationalistic or too horrible to consider... Besides Siegfried Sassoon's Does it matter, there is Alfred Lord Tennyson's The charge of the Light Brigade that influenced this poem...
But okay, I am glad it finally worked out. Live is the most precious gift of all (next to the wife, in my case, praised be the Lady of the Broom). Stay safe!
John, so very moving and forlorn in places but ending on hope.
A real journey to venture on and said journey is touching and spiritual,
And with regards to aftermath of and war or conflict between nations it is never a question of what has been but, what could have been regrading lives tragically cut short.
And John full honours respectfully and deservedly bestowed sir.
And will endeavour to catch up on more this Sunday evening.
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