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Poppies

He was only sixteen when he answered the call,
And followed his peers to the war to end wars.
Sent over the water to fight for the state,
But the glory he sought, turned to fear and to hate.
A few glorious charges, that was what they were told,
All over by Christmas ands then back to the fold.
So much left unsaid in the speeches they gave,
The truth; barbed wire, bombardment and a long line of graves.

When he came to the front he was not yet a man,
But to do a mans duty, his soul in fates hands.
Not yet embraced living and never been kissed,
An alien in a strange land who would never be missed.
He cowered in the trenches, the mire and the mud,
Asking deliverance he talked to his god
Then the guns they fell silent; the rain of death stopped,
To the blast of a whistle it was over the top.

He doesn't remember too much now
Past times fade beyond recall
He forgets the noise of the battle
And the hell of it all.
The faces of the heroes
The cowards and dead
He just remembers the poppies
A vibrant summer red.

Through the hospital window he sees old men parade
The armistice veterans with their proud medals and braid
Soon none will remain from the fourteen eighteen,
Just boys in old photographs forever nineteen
The flowers in the buttonholes stir memories inside
Of a more peaceful Europe before the turn of the tide
Of green fields and flowers, before the before the blood and the mire,
Of poppies in meadows, before the trenches and wire.

He doesn't remember too much now
Past times fade beyond recall
He forgets the noise of the battle
And the hell of it all.
The faces of the heroes
The cowards and dead
He just remembers the poppies
A vibrant summer red.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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