Poppies

This is for Heie, who said she was "looking forward to more pictures and poetry". Long drives are very tedious without music or radio, and I got to thinking - well what about it? I haven't written poetry for perhaps 50 years but the same would apply to serious photography. Perhaps it would be a good way to keep my brain active while driving. Or did the poppies come first? I'm, not sure, but here is the result of some hours of driving and thinking:

Flanders - the Flanders Fields

Wide, flat and acid green

Factories for human food

And not a flower to be seen.

Poppies are not wanted here.

They're surplus to requirements,
A red too vibrant for these over-fertile plains,
Symbols of a million deaths.

Yet as I drive along the triple lanes

Of concrete tar and metal

I see a flash of colour:

There in the long and dusty meadow

Between the barriers that keep the cars apart

That's where the poppies are,

With the other refugees from chemical death,

The oilseed rape and the big white daisies.

There, nourished by the fumes they prosper,

Mile upon mile, they call out to me

"We're still here"