Poppies in November

On the left, the standard emblem of Remembrance Sunday, lying on the roadside verge.  I don't wear one of these.  

In the middle, a white poppy made for me by blipper  Dogwithnobrain a couple of years ago when I said I needed one. It stands for the memory of all casualties of war, civilian as well as military.

On the right, a Welsh poppy still blooming in the November wind and rain, a bit worse for wear but with another bud ready to take over.

This year, again, there have been expressions of outrage when a minor show business personality failed to wear on red poppy on TV.

In a news item on the subject today, two veterans, one from WW2 and one from Afghanistan, compared notes on how they remembered their comrades. The old soldier spoke bitterly of his time at the front and how undervalued he had felt after the war was over. He could never forget his band of brothers but he never wears a poppy. The younger soldier said something like 'You fought for the right to NOT to wear a poppy.'

My attention was drawn also today to a  powerful, unpublished poem by a young writer, Zafar Kunial, called Poppy. If you have a few minutes to spare you can listen to it on SoundCloud  here. It puts the symbolism of the flower into a wider perspective than that which occupies popular imagination.