With apologies to John McCrae
In Ukraine fields sunflowers grow.
From Russian blood, row on row,
This was not their place; so far from home
Their bodies the sunflowers loam.
Their flowers seeds to feed the crow.
They are the dead. Short days ago
They lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now they lie,
In Ukraine fields.
In Putin’s war, based on a lie.
In a foreign land they were made to die.
And now their sunflowers reach the sky.
Leaving mothers and widows who can only cry.
They shall not live, though sunflowers grow
In Ukraine fields.
*The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine. This poem was inspired by an old Ukraine woman who approached a Russian occupier. She gave him a bag of sunflower seeds telling him to put them in his pocket so the sunflowers would grow out of his body when he died on Ukrainian soil.
