Some poems
for Remembrance Sunday. In memory
of family members and everyone else who has served or is serving in a war, at home or abroad.
Poppy seeds (WW2)
We rise as soldiers,
taken from our beds as youths,
stripped from the warmth of family
to lands we’ve never seen,
places never heard of before,
from conversation and cosy silences
to the roar of guns, planes, bombs,
scuff of dirt, splintered wounds.
We suffer it for the greater cause,
memories of loved ones we’ve left,
hiding in the bowels of the Underground
and hideaways not built for this.
We charge into the face of danger
not knowing if it sees us,
not knowing if it will turn its cheek
and let us return back home.
Sunflowers (Ukraine)
We think on a thing that’s true,
talk of freedom, a reflection of the time
we cannot have, this yesterday of ours.
Boots stamp the hills of our country flat,
choke it with fire, wails and bullets,
black smoke, explosions splintering glass.
The snake rides its hide for 40 miles out,
carves a barren trench in our supple soil.
We hide inside our own shocked expressions.
This is not living. It’s a smothering of life,
this sharp shock to the consciousness.
He walks with death, this stickman, the usurper,
this mad dictator whose greed is his undoing.
The old women weep. They hug our hearts
to their chests. We are rag dolls. Sunflowers
nod beneath a pale blue, quaking sky.
Where are the saviours? Where are our rescuers?
We ask for our skies to be sheltered,
but we are pleading to the silence of fear.
People fight and people tower ever higher,
growing in magnitude to match their courage,
but we are small; the children are so small.
We ball our fists and scream into the dark,
wondering if our outrage will see us through.
The enemy is coming; he is close on our heels.
We can smell him through the smoldering wood
and he pretends to know our weaknesses.
But we are strong; we are united in our fight.
The sun may go down in our restless sky,
but we will never sink lower than the horizon.
We hold the sunflowers against our skin,
bathe in the golden glow they bestow.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone
