Maple leaves and poppies

Poppies still bloom
in Flanders’ Fields
though guns
no longer roar
and children romp
where carnage raged
in war-torn days of yore.
To honour those who
perished there 
far from their northern home
row-on-row of maple leaves
were fondly carved in stone.
At the eleventh hour
on the eleventh dayof the eleventh month
Canada remembers them.

-William Bedford