Poppies

“Poppies” is a poem by the English poet Jane Weir, first published in 2005 as part of her collection The Way I Dressed. Written in response to the poet Carol Ann Duffy’s call for more war poems about the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Weir’s poem imagines the trials and difficulties of war from the perspective of a mother who sends her child off to fight. The poem investigates this grief by comparing it, through an extended metaphor, to the more general feeling of anxiety that all parents face as their children prepare to enter a frightening and often violent world. 

Poppies 

Three days before Armistice Sunday

and poppies had already been placed

on individual war graves. Before you left,

I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,

spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade

of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,

I rounded up as many white cat hairs

as I could, smoothed down your shirt's

upturned collar, steeled the softening

of my face. I wanted to graze my nose

across the tip of your nose, play at

being Eskimos like we did when

you were little. I resisted the impulse

to run my fingers through the gelled

blackthorns of your hair. All my words

flattened, rolled, turned into felt,

slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked

with you, to the front door, threw

it open, the world overflowing

like a treasure chest. A split second

and you were away, intoxicated.

After you'd gone I went into your bedroom,

released a song bird from its cage.

Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,

and this is where it has led me,

skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy

making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without

a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.

On reaching the top of the hill I traced

the inscriptions on the war memorial,

leaned against it like a wishbone.

The dove pulled freely against the sky,

an ornamental stitch, I listened, hoping to hear

your playground voice catching on the wind

By Jane Weir