Poppies for my daughter

Last November I painted poppies
just for you -

and though I mixed the colours,
and held the brush,

the imagery was far more yours
than mine - starkly beautiful,

like your war poems, conceived
you tell me, in another place,
another time.

I watched as blood-stains soaked
the page; his blood, that of our ancestor,

yours and mine, the one whose spirit
moved the earth beneath

your feet that day in Flanders,
when you stumbled into a shell-hole....

I did not paint those poppies;
I think they were his gift to you

a reminder for both of us
lest we forget.