A Poppy for Remembrance

Today is Anzac Day, an Australian day of remembrance, commemorating Australians and New Zealanders who ‘who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations’.

The remembrance poppy is an artificial flower that has traditionally been used as a symbol to commemorate the war dead since 1921; it was inspired by the WW1 poem In Flanders Fields written in 1915 by the Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (1872–1918). Here is the first verse:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

My poppy is an enamel ring that I found in a thrift store in the last few months. I love enamel jewellery, and poppies as a flower, and today this ring is a perfect remembrance.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

—For the Fallen, 1914, Robert Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)

Photo: April 2019