In Rememberance

poppies, ambulance poppies
caught in unseasonable warmth
stragglers of the stubble

an untimely October showing
buttoned black unseeing
breathe out their reminder

a present of such enormity
where bones or a button would suffice
becomes a birthday gift*

this eyeless blood flap of memory
soaks through the stopped pages
in the back-drip of the years

Richard Scutter 27 October 2007

Footnote …

* See Poppies in October (27 October 1962), Sylvia Plath Collected Poems