Where poppies flew – For Friday Fictioneers

· by · in flashfiction, Friday Fictioneers, poetry. ·


My days pass slowly under the shadow of a temple bell. That ominous bell tolling threnodies of losses, of sorrows I bear under a facade of stoic boredom. The poppies underneath remind me of all blood sacrificed unnecessarily, they scream in pain of hatred I once had inside. When I look on the cerulean skies it shows through a haze of sulphurous gunsmoke and in the summer meadows I still smell the stench of open trenches. I might still be alive, but parts of me linger in those fields where a generation lost its innocence, those fields where poppies flew.

Copyright David Stewart

Copyright David Stewart


I have only read Rochelle’s story before posting my own, and since she didn’t post historic fiction I decided to do it instead. My story is inspired by a poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. I assume that many of you are familiar with “In Flanders fields”.

Friday Fictioneers is a dynamic group of bloggers, who every week gather around the same picture trying to come up with a story of around 100 words to match the picture. Visit Rochelle‘s page to learn more, and why not join in?.
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February 18, 2014

79 responses to “Where poppies flew – For Friday Fictioneers”

  2. A beautiful write on a sobering subject. It does indeed read as prose poetry.

  5. Beautiful, Bjorn. WWI is the forgotten war, overshadowed by WWII. But the horrors of trench warfare are terrible. Excellent job.

    I’d never heard “threnodies” before but I think you might mean “stoic” rather than “stoich”, which appears to have something to do with science. 🙂

    janet

    • Ah.. thank you .. of course I mean stoic… and yes.. WWI had it’s terrors.. that were different, and to some extent a precursor to WWII.. At least the poppies for veterans come from that poem.. so in a way it’s well remembered.

  10. All those poetic images brought the horror alive for me, just as it did for your suffering character. Thank you for the new word – threnodies. I’ve never come across that before. I like it.

  11. Your word choices in this piece touch all the senses…sight, sound, smell. Even “young ‘uns” can understand the horror of the WWI battlefields from your piece.

  13. Lovely piece, Bjorn, and lovely film clip to accompany it. My dad was older when I was born and had been in the U.S. Navy during that war. The ship he was on took U.S. troops from New York City to Brest, France.

  21. Nicely done. Beautifully captured the spirit of World War 1. I could almost hear Flanders Fields. We have a WW1 museum in Kansas City. It’s the only one of its kind anywhere in the world (pretty much). Check it out on the website.

  23. Bjorn, everything you write is poetry, I swear. 🙂 This had strong WW1 imagery, but also it reminded me of the European practice of melting down captured Ottoman cannons and turning them into church bells, with the story told from the bell’s point of view, as if the spirit of the cannon still resided in the bell. I know that’s not what you intended, but it brought that to my mind.

  26. I almost went the historic route, and strangely, my story was so inspired by a series on the BBC called ‘Britain’s Great War’ – yet I went off at a vast tangent.
    My favourite poem ever is Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et decorum est’ it haunts me, much like your narrator is haunted. Hypnotic work, Bjorn.

  37. i enjoyed reading your version to the photo prompt and then hearing the poem that inspired you. thank you for the rich history lesson.

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