For Susan on her birthday*

At a distance they appear
so unexpectedly red,
a vivid vermillion strip
in a growing green field.

We walked up the farm track
to view a few stragglers
lost on their way to their
Red-Together meeting.
They were intensely red
with liquorice-black centres,
free from that dustiness
of poppies in swathes.

Alone,
and too red to be real,
their stalks too tall
ungainly, anorexic even.

En masse,
nodding variously,
a thousand-strong Red Army choir
chorusing their hearts out.