MUSING

A POPPY Before Rememberance Day

10th November 2012

Image by Jemma Darlington

My Mother's first ever planting of Poppy seeds, has birthed it's first stunningly elegant red Poppy. This still, grey morning; the morn' before the day we stop to pay respects to the men and woman (and children, animals and the Earth) who have suffered at the hands of war.

It has only just in the last few weeks, after reading a personal, historical record of an Australian's experience of World War I as a child, that my heart has come to understand the burden and sacrifice of such makings of man. Previously war had just been a thing that they made us learn about when I was in school. 

But I am at a point in my life where I am begining to understand such things as leaving ones life, love and home to answer the call of the Country, to then go and undertake huge personal sacrifice (often of limb and life), to murder and pillage in the name of life.

A poem by Judith Wright:

Soldier's Farm

This ploughland vapoured with the dust of dreams,

these delicate gatherings of dancing trees,

answered the question of his searching eyes

as his wife's body answered to his arms.

He let the whole gold day pass in a stare,

walking the turning furrow. The horses drew

his line straight where the shakesword corn should grow.

He, lurching mooncalf, let his eyes stride far.

They stooped across the swell and sink of hill;

made record of the leaves that played with light.

The mist was early and the moon was late,

and in between he stared his whole day full.

He asked for nothing but the luck to live,

so now his willing blood moves in these trees

that hold his heart up sunwards with their arms.

The mists dissolve at morning like his dreams

and the creek answered light as once his eyes;

and yet he left here nothing but his love.

Image by Jemma Darlington