Patience of Poppies

When the world was young, plants covered the Earth and grew wherever they would; The land was green; trees had mastery then and forests covered much of the earth. In these forests and in the fields and plains between them, other plants prospered too.

With each year that passed, the plants would prepare to bring forth their young; they'd stand tall and proud displaying their glory in the masses of flowers that burst forth when the season was right, and later they would spill their seeds upon the land all around them so that their offspring could thrive and grow....

Then man came, with his desire to master the land and to claim it for himself. He cut down the trees, he chose which crops to grow to suit his own purposes, and he strove to cover the fields only with the plants that he desired.

The other plants saw what man was doing, and knew that their fate was sealed. Many did nothing and man cut them down and destroyed them; even their seeds were lost; they died and were no more.

Others in their arrogance, knew that man saw their beauty and believed that he would turn from destroying them. For a time, man saw them, enjoyed their colours and the scent of their flowers and stayed his hand from cutting them down, but as man's desire for more land increased, even these were destroyed.

Others retreated into the ground with their seeds and prepared to fight man for the land when the time was right; but their patience wasn't sufficient: every year their seeds would cause new plants to spring forth again, determined to share the land with the plants of man, but man would always cut them down, uproot them or destroy them with poison.

One plant looked upon the arrogance of the others and as it's delicate, fragile crepe-like petals fluttered in the wind, it knew that man could not be swayed by its beauty alone. It saw the other plants retreat into the earth and knew it's own life would soon end, so it decided to save its children. It sent its own seeds down into the earth, not to emerge again soon like the other plants though; it sent its children deeper, and prepared them to wait, for as long as they needed to: for one year or for ten, or for decades if necessary. It knew it couldn't fight man, so it buried its children down away from the land of man, until the day might come when man's attention had turned elsewhere, or even for the day when man was no more.

But man's desire for land didn't only cause him to kill the plants; the animals that served no purpose for him were soon destoyed too. He even fought with other men who desired the same land, and as the years went by, man began to wage war amongst his own kind in the very fields he'd once seized from the plants.

Above the ground man fought against his fellow man and killed his own kind, his brothers. Thousands upon thousands died, but still it went on; For a time it seemed there might never be an end to it, and in the fields where they fought, even man's own chosen plants were destroyed as the very land itself was turned and broken, until there was nothing remaining but the earth itself, until even the men who had fought upon it had died in their millions.

Deep in the earth, the sleeping seeds sensed the upheaval of the earth above them; they sensed that man was waging war with himself, and after a time, when things had calmed and a new silence had fallen, they thought that perhaps the time had finally come for them to emerge.

So it was that the seeds that had slept for so long, finally brought forth plants that struggled up through the broken earth, and emerged into the sunlight above. They grew proud and strong again, without man there to destroy them, and as the seasons changed, for the first time in decades their bright proud flowers were seen again.

But man had not gone away. He stood nearby and looked over the fields where the plants now bloomed. He gazed at the sea of flowers before him, and their beauty overcame him. But more than that, the sight of something so beautiful, emerging from somewhere that had seen such destruction, overwhelmed him. The thought that anything at all could have survived the battles that had raged there amazed him.

The red of the petals reminded him of the blood of his fallen comrades who had been killed, and of the blood of his enemies who he had killed, and he saw the flowers that grew there as a symbol of the war that had been and of the peace that was to come.

He smiled through his tears, and he let the poppies grow there undisturbed, for a time at least.

Dedicated to my friend Kitty, (who loves poppies.)