This poem I wrote in 2011, is dedicated to all who served in WW1. Today I have posted it on my social media accounts in remembrance and as we all observe the centennial of the end of The Great War.
This post went live on the 11th day of the 11th hour of Remembrance Sunday (UK)
Persecuted Poppies
by Nicholas A. Price
Brushed to the side on the troubled range,
Rotten muddy boot trampled,
Fleeting delicacy falls to the ground,
Joining those in bloodied battle and sullied trench,
Wilting beneath a lottery of rhythmic gunfire,
Reddened earth streams entering foreign soil,
Meadows of mottled carnage, dense disguising weeds,
Open wounds of opiate terror, the same simple flower,
Connected wreaths, solitary remembrance,
Dying for dyed paper and substituted wishes,
Memories forgotten, wavering as time muddies life,
Delivering a harsh message,
The venerable truth of endless conflict,
Tyrants crushed on Flanders fields,
Resurfacing in Farah and further,
The expectation of an era, those bitterly lost souls,
The balance due remains unpaid,
Crushed by an eerie two minute ceasefire,
Unscathed by those rasping tears,
A misplaced generation,
Amid those dimly lit thoughts of desecration,
Chanted wishes from afar,
Falling on rocky resolute ears,
Persecuted poppies, with mercy for no one.
Copyright ©2011-2018 Nicholas A. Price from the book An Elephant in My Backyard. Reprinted by permission
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