In Flanders Field

by John McCrae, May 1915

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.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
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.

It's Remembrance Day! Hopefully I won't lose my poppy like i do every other year before the day is out. There's so much to say about today and it's impossible to do without sounding trite. I'm not going to bother though, i'll leave that to the real writers. Suffice it to say today I will Remember. I'm good at trivializing things, so here goes! The other day i'm at the Queen subway station in that no man's land between the Bay and Eaton's Centre. There's a veteran there with his box of poppies and there's a homeless man there too. The homeless man was picking a fight with the veteran b/c the veteran was on his "turf" and was distracting people from giving him money. But the veteran was all like i'm a veteran and i have a permit. It was getting really REALLY heated. I didn't stick around to catch the rest of it, but neither of them were there when i was going home. Like you'd think that the homeless guy would've let the veteran sell his poppies! If it wasn't for the veteran the homeless guy wouldn't even have the freedom to panhandle there.

When i was a kid, Remembrance Day was such a HUGE deal for me. Invariably i'd get to read one of my poorly written poems (they were seriously hurting) during the school assembly every year. Our teachers used to make us memorize In Flanders Field, i still know it by heart. It's engraved there like the Lord's Prayer (which is embedded in French as well thanks to Mme McQuaid.) Then there were the songs that we used to sing as part of choir and the little movie that we'd watch. It was the same movie every year, but it still made me sad even in grade 6 (my last year in elementary school). What i used to love BEST about Remembrance Day was when my classmates' grandparents who were veterans used to come in and talk to us about the war, we'd all cram into the library and sit on the brown patchy carpet and i'd devour everything they sad. Michael's grandfather came every year until he died and so did Danny's (he was my dance partner in folk dancing lol) grandmother. I think that's what makes me the saddest about Remembrance Day is that I don't see as many veterans around anymore.

Lest we forget.