Remembering
Written by members of the Teesdale School Poetry Club for Remembrance Day 2017
Mind, it’s all in the mind.
You are forgetting what you need not know
Solidifying that which you hold dear.
All the things I remember I hold dear to my own heart
Flimsy as they may be, are they forgettable?
Why do we remember
The gunfire and the shots
Those holes in the ground
And the soldiers we lost?
So why do we remember?
You stand there, silently, for what seems like four years.
You stare blankly at life with fear in your dead eyes.
Why do we remember?
Is it because they were our fathers?
Born from their deaths
Babies with cheeks
Red as the poppies of the field were?
The hateful partition’s impending repetition
Our primal indulgence in Earth, wind and fire
Presented merely in our sound and vision
By flimsy red cardboard hanging off our attire.
Why do we remember?
Is it in our DNA
That we file away all memories
And kid ourselves they’ll stay?
So why, today?