Tomorrow I will pick flowers to put on the center stone of the Labyrinth.  But no visitors will come, no notice inviting them will grace the local paper.  Nor will I read names of the dead there as I do in the late fall.  Better weather for standing with a list, in May; proof I am not the brightest bulb in the package that I do it in October or November instead.

Yesterday, running errands, we stopped to put money in the jar outside the grocery store and took paper poppies in return.  Poppies, red like those that cover the famous fields in Flanders, evoking memories of a war pretty much forgotten by the young.  World War I was a war of trenches, mud, rain, and artillery barrages that buried men alive.  It was the war that they hoped would end all wars.  No such luck.

The names of 148,000 veterans are being read by volunteers this weekend—and it will take ten days to get through that list.  Having stood outdoors with a list of over 5400 names to read, I know what time it takes and what toll on the heart.  Nineteen year olds who will never hold their children; fifty year olds whose grandchildren won’t know them; women whose children have heard their last bedtime story from mom—it all tears holes in the heart.

My monument to the cost of the recent wars will be adorned with flowers and a paper red poppy tomorrow.  And today, I will walk through the beauty of early summer in the Nor’west, thinking of eyes that cannot see it and holding each image in trust for them.  Oh, that we would be wiser and more careful of lives that stand in harm’s way at the order of others!

No, I have nothing enlightened or lyrical to say.  This day breaks my heart and shuts my mouth.

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