when he fought in the
Great War off in France.
There’s not much he’s willing to
say about those days, except about the poppies.
He remembers the poppies,
red on the graves of the dead.
Daddy says
that war tore France up
worse than a tornado,
worse than a dust storm,
but no matter,
the wild poppies bloomed in the trail of the fighting,
brightening the French countryside.
I wish I could see poppies
growing out of this dust.
May 1934