A poppy.
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row."
John McCrae, a Canadian army officer and physician penned those words after witnessing carnage's horror at Ypres.
Those departed dead soldiers, including my own brother, Lucas Ventline, since World War I who are recalled this Memorial Day with the red crepe-paper poppies, have that 1915 poem, entitled, "In Flanders Fields."
Responding back to the poem's beginning, those memorialized dead this Monday voice:
"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, though poppies grow in Flanders fields."
A poppy ripe with red of blood shed and spread across the globe.
Never again a war!
War's primitive ways of resolving conflict, and, tradition never again.
But, a poppy merits Monday's meaning mostly for memory of many women and men mighty warriors defending liberty bell and beyond.
A poppy to wear.
Like a penny pressed in one's palm to remind in God we trust, the poppies we wear, "blow between the crosses, row on row."
They signify the meaning, and, the many we mourn this Monday's Memorial
Day.
Wonderful commentary, thank you Pastor Ventline.
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