Where The Poppies Grow

Where The Poppies Grow

Poppies grow the ground keeps quiet,

It does not ask who we came for,

Red heads bowing beside the water,

Like they have seen this before.

The river keeps moving without care,

Cold around the stones and bone,

I stood there longer than I meant to,

Feeling more alone than alone.

The mountains did not speak to me,

They never pretend to know,

They just watched the years pile up,

And let the seasons go.

I thought of hands I once held,

And how easily they are gone,

Loss is not loud in places like this,

It settles and carries on.

The poppies burned against the dark,

Too bright for what they stand in,

Beauty grows without mercy here,

Fed by what has been.

I did not pray, I did not beg,

I only stayed still and breathed,

Faith feels different in the open,

When there is nothing to believe.

The water said nothing useful,

Still I listened like it might,

Some answers live in the waiting,

Not the sound or the light.

Where the poppies grow I left my grief,

Not healed, just set down slow,

Some pain belongs to the earth itself,

And knows exactly where to grow.