I remember my old grand dad
Always wore his Sunday best
We always called him "Poppy"
It was always pinned upon his chest

For as long as I remember
He always had that piece of red
Tattered, torn, but sturdy
In memory of the dead

Echoes in his mind of years
Images so real
I never asked him what he saw
His tears...they sealed the deal
A silver screen of vintage flicks
In his brain of days gone by
Of good times with the friends he had
Of the days he saw them die

"Poppy" sat out on the porch
With his beat up Meerschaum pipe
He kept it tight between his lips
I never once saw it alight

He'd stare out in the distance
Seeing things from back in time
He'd listen to the voices
He never quite heard mine

We lost him back in eighty three
When "Poppy" got the wire
He was the last of his platoon
They had just lost Cpl. Squire

Echoes in his mind of years
Images so real
I never asked him what he saw
His tears...they sealed the deal
A silver screen of vintage flicks
In his brain of days gone by
Of good times with the friends he had
Of the days he saw them die




"Poppy" went inside himself
Never spoke another word
He was back with his old friends
As free as a free bird

Each year he would get dressed up
"Poppy" would go out on parade
He never, ever left the house
The porch was the longest trip he made

On the eleventh of November
He'd would polish up his boots
And at precisely eleven hundred hours
He would stand there and salute

Two minutes more of silence
From a man who didn't speak
But his actions, they said volumes
They showed that "Poppy" was not weak

Echoes in his mind of years
Images so real
I never asked him what he saw
His tears...they sealed the deal
A silver screen of vintage flicks
In his brain of days gone by
Of good times with the friends he had
Of the days he saw them die


"Poppy" never left his prison
The one he created in his head
His world was just the front porch
And the life that he once led

I remember my old grand dad
With his poppy, beat by time
It would adorn his chest proudly
And I now wear it on mine.