Unfortunately my annual poppy fell off my coat yesterday – I have no idea where I lost it. Oh well, I managed to wear it for a week or so. Actually, I bought a virtual poppy (which doesn’t include an actual poppy), so a friend who had an extra one, gave it to me so I had one to wear!
I had it on last Sunday when I went to have tea with a young, recent immigrant friend, who commented that she saw a lot of people wearing poppies but didn’t understand why. I explained the significance. I found “In Flanders Fields” online and I read it out loud to her.
I haven’t read the poem in years and didn’t remember much more than it was a poem about war. I thought it had been written during WWII but learned it had been written in WWI, by a Canadian.
But most important, I realized, as I read the poem it was the dead speaking to the living. I don’t remember that being mentioned way back in grade school before all of the students at Sir Charles Tupper Elementary School assembled on the stairs and in the dark wood-panelled hallway of the central foyer at 11:00am on Remembrance Day to acknowledge the sacrifice of our Canadian soldiers.
When Sakina asked me about the poppy, I started:
“In Flanders Fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses row on row…”
But that was as far as I could go – I probably memorized the entire poem in grade school but I haven’t really thought about it since. Not even on Remembrance Day in the many intervening years.
It was last Sunday afternoon as I was reading “In Flanders Fields” to a newcomer to Canada that I heard the words – as I explained them to Sakina.
I was just doing my daily read through the mail in my inbox. Today, Steve Brodner, cartoonist, shared his illustrated version of the poem and I read it again, silently, slowly.
“Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, tough poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
An important warning for all of us in these perilous times!
The election results, past Tuesday, in the US may have been a resounding repudiation of trump’s actions these past two years, but just yesterday – one week later – the Democrats couldn’t organize themselves to vote to impeach Hegseth! A harbinger of a weak and inept congress to come after Jan 3?
Any elation I had been feeling after the election results came in a week ago has just dissipated. I felt an enormous let-down when I started reading accounts of what happened in the House yesterday.
trump has made his intentions for the next two months clear – naming Stephen Miller as chief of staff; Republicans have made their intentions clear by choosing Jim Jordan as Minority Leader. And the Democrats – with their substantial majority in the House – pissed away their power by not ensuring every possible Democrat would be present to vote to impeach Hegseth?
American voters passed the torch, for Democrats to hold it high! And what do they do the first chance they get – break faith with those who voted!
I sit here in Canada, still glued to the chaos south of us – knowing we must stand against the foe and hoping our leadership is wise and smart enough to navigate us through the mess toward stability….
