POPPY DAY

Sorry, my pictures of Gallipoli, taken on a visit to Turkey ten years ago are on a disk that won't play on this computer, but here is a poem I wrote, In Crete,at the foot of the Imbros gorge is a place wherethe guide books swear apparitions of dead soldiers appear on May 31st every year. APPARITIONS Every Anzac Day just before sunrise standing behind old men in wheel chairs. I see boys in short pants and long socks Hoping the war would not end before they had their chance to go. I see Ralph who fell under a train on his way to camp. I see Jock, tall,blond and musical missing in Crete. I see Graeme the freckled clown who made great puns in Latin shot down over Germany. And all the others so full of potential who never achieved anything but their names on the Cenotaph.