{poppies at the Tower of London}

My mum's relative, John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, scribbled down a poem on May 1915 in Ypres, that would become the most recited poem on Remembrance Day:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields

I am grateful that guns no longer are heard above our heads here in London, but I am also reminded that so many people around the world do not know peace.

The exhibition at the Tower of London, which I visited a couple of weekends ago, offers a poignant visual to the text: 

xo, 

L