Each Memorial Day, when I was young, the large community cemetery behind our church filled with flags that waved across the sloping hillside. Volunteers from the VFW commemorate those soldiers who died in service to their country by placing a flag on each grave. I never saw any poppies growing as in Flanders’s Field, but many other flowers dotted the hillside along with the flags.

Memories are mixed

Joy and sorrow flows freely

as blood // and poppies

wave on the resting places

of those who never came home

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Photo: Dwight L. Roth

Frank Tassone asked to write a Haikai poem Haiku or Tanka that reflects on some aspect of Memorial Day.  Check them all out at:

#Haikai Challenge #35 (5/26/18): Memorial Day #haiku #senryu #haibun #tanka #haiga #renga