I am the poppy that blows in Flanders Fields, the stomping ground of battle boots and the subject of their wearers’ woes. For many years, it is here that I’ve been born and unborn, through the roaring waves of time. I have both swum in still green grasses, and drowned in muddy crimson tides. The earth where I dwell is soiled with sorrow, the kind only Man against Man can bestow. My stem suckles on its aftermath and from it my color grows, Yet I persist. Through the barbed wire that shreds my skin, through the trample of horses and the tamping of artillery wheels whose monsoon of casualties will soon begin, I persist. When new white crosses become neighbors in this sprawling city, built atop the dead bodies of those whose tragic ends I pity, I persist. While a young man from a land West and North bears witness to my plight, While he scribbles words on a page, his melancholy mind churning late into night, I persist. My persistence earns me recognition through that young man's representation. What he writes ignites my union with the maple leaf, our parallel preservation. You see, he and I share the same tortured soul, for he is the poet and I am the poppy that blew in Flanders Fields.
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