The Earth Remembers

The heart of the poppy remembers. 

During the Napoleonic era,  it was first noticed that blood red poppies bloomed in fields that had seen battle.  Somehow, the earth remembered.  Later it was discovered that the chalk in the soil reacted with the lime left from the rubble  created during battles.  Regardless of the science, what is most important is that the poppies remembered.  Human activity did not go unnoticed by nature.

And if the earth can remember pain and suffering, I wonder, can it not also remember joy?

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Does the grass remember the children who ran across it barefoot all those years ago?  Do the trees remember the boys who played their army games from their makeshift bases among them in the woods?  Now the boys are grown and war is no longer a game.   If the forest can remember, does it also long for their return?

Long after I am gone, and the trees and grass are still here, will they continue to hold the memories of boys who played among them?  These boys who too quickly grew into men and travelled far from home?  And one who especially liked to run barefoot through the woods and is now serving in Afghanistan, a land known for its poppies, and the ravages of its war?  

I hope so.  But if the trees and grass forget, I’m sure the poppies that spring up every year in the front yard will remind them.

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