Of all the tear-jerking images of war on the edges of Europe, one or two have stayed with me: birds shocked from their treetop roosts by the deep boom of artillery fire; a woman handing out sunflower seeds to occupying Russian forces.
This poem has grown from these images. Like In Flanders Fields (from which it borrows heavily and compares badly), it’s a rondeau. Sadly, John McCrae had first hand experience of war to inform his work. Glady, I have none. So please forgive any unintended insensitivity. It is, necessarily, a work of imagination.
So Sunflowers Grow
So sunflowers grow where you die
She said with hate-and-hope-pierced eye
Then handed the soldier a seed
It will grow when Ukraine is freed
Rooted in your blood, in your lie.
Air sucked from a bird-shrapneled sky
Lungs emptied before the reply
No thanks heard. Silent, unstaunched bleed
So sunflowers grow.
Shot once they said: sniped; head too high.
Crumpled camo, no time to lie
Unregimented – pulled up weed
Withered. Lifeless. Yet in that deed
Of decomposting spirits fly
So sunflowers grow.