The rain is definitely trying to make the village green resemble the fields of Flanders in time for the Remembrance Sunday wreath laying. I’m not allowed to go to the green with my Master and Mistress so I asked if I could borrow a poem that my Mistress wrote to share with you all.
Flanders’ Fields
Life’s fleeting impossibility claws through the aftermath of the rain sodden trenches.
The tread boards sunk in the churned quagmire of yesterday,
A reminder of the unmarked graves.
Here lie the myriad believers in a struggle for tomorrow.
Sent to die by the turbid commands of authority,
Into the acrid haze of battle.
The mud, cloying and omnipresent, claiming their footsteps,
Claiming their struggle,
Claiming their torso,
Claiming their very breath.
Lungs clogged by the rich brown earth to which they return.
Yet there in Flanders fields,
A greater hand orchestrates the whole.
Poised to grow the poppy red carpet of peace above those sodden graves.
© Rosemary J Kind
When you’ve driven past those fields on Remembrance Sunday and you’ve dug in the sodden ground that makes up those fields and you’ve looked at the thousands of names listed on the memorial at Ypres, you start to understand in a very small way just what a tragic sacrifice was made and at what a price peace was brought about.
I’d just like to add a little note to send all my friends and relatives in Belgium hugs and licks from an Alfie Dog who misses his homeland.
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kindalfie@alfiedog.me.uk