Remembrance

A poem for Remembrance Sunday.

It's as old as blood, this mourning of the dead.

Limbs strewn petals on the battlefield

As cold as fear, as sharp as love, as red

As absence.

This bold unfolding of littered leaves,

Autumn's yield of final glory,

Red, green, gold,

Foretells demise of summer;

Still, we hold

To old, familiar lies,

And promise that this one

Shall be the last,

The flowers bloom and die,

Even as we mourn for summers past,

Youth's petals newly shed;

It's as old as life,

This mourning of the dead.