November 11, 2018
Veterans’ Day/Remembrance Day
On both sides of the USA/Canadian border, we honor those who serve their countries, sometimes to the point of injury or death.
In Canada, we use red lapel poppies to remind us of this, because a military doctor named John McCrae wrote about poppies marking the soldiers’ burial grounds. The poem is called “In Flanders Fields.”
(For those of you who are American, take the time to look up the poem online.)
A few years ago, our local library sponsored a poetry contest for people to respond to McCrae’s poem. Here is my entry.
Batons and Sentinels
How can a field of flowers,
Scarlet sentinels of grace,
Heads lifted by the winds of peace,
Secure this place?
How can a place of beauties red,
And grass bright green that hides the bed
Of bloody war and noisy death
Silence this place?
How can the whisper of a breeze
That dips and plays against blue sky,
Speak louder than the cries of pain,
And soothe this place?
The poppies in this quiet field
For generations of the free,
Become fragile batons to pass,
Symbols to hold and see.
We hold them as we run
The unrelenting relay race for peace,
Paid for by war,
So soldiers still may sleep, in Flanders Fields.