Remembering

For Remembrance this year, I'm looking at a simple pleasure I derive in life, and how much I would miss such small things if they were so drastically and suddenly replaced.  A gardener - a tomato grower - has enlisted to fight the Great War in France.  Leaving his young tomato plants in the care of his mother, he looks forward to his return, when he will pick the ripe fruits, and marvel at the wondrousness of life.

The Gardener

“All over by Christmas”

That’s what the newspapers wrote

My adventure awoken

So I journeyed to France on a boat

Gazed out over the Channel

And scribbled my mother a note:

“How are my tomatoes?”

My tomatoes grow tall and grow strong,

In the warm Springtime sun.

We travelled to Cambrai

We dug into this dank, dirty trench

With mud on our faces

And no end to the damp deathly stench

Our hearts full of Blighty

But we learned the land like we were French;

My mind full of tomatoes,

My tomatoes bear little green fruits,

In the new summer sun.

Now the fighting was vicious

Like nothing we’d witnessed before

We lost so many faces

Guns, shells, mines; all the armour of war

People riddled with bullets

And a man’s mind can take nothing more;

But my lovely tomatoes,

My tomatoes are plump, and they blush!

In the late summer sun.

I’m remembered at Pozieres

Though no soldier my body could find

So they marched back to Calais

Leaving all of us Fallen behind

Now the poppies grow on me

Like they grow on the heart and the mind;

As for my tomatoes,

My tomatoes, they wither and die in the shy

Autumn sun.