I’ve seen the Canadian troops,
Marching all clad in green,
and through their blood, sweat, and tears,
I wonder what they’ve seen.

I know I’ve seen plenty,
From victory and loss
To men sacrificing their lives
Like Jesus at the cross.

I felt the sound of gunshots,
Witnessed blood being shed,
I heard screams and bad dreams
Over good men, now dead.

One day sometime after it was done,
A little boy sat with me and asked me, “Why,
why did a good man like my dad have to die?”
I could only whisper in reply:

“Your daddy was brave, he died for us all,”
He started to cry, while I stood tall.
The little boy could hear me not,
I could sense that comfort was what he sought.

I whispered then as loud as I could,
“Remember forever, your daddy was good.”
The boy looked up and smiled with a tear in his eye.
He said, “I’ll never forget the day my daddy died.”

The boy got up and picked a poppy, blood red.
“I’ll remember he was good each eleventh of November,”
He put the poppy on a rock and said,
“This is for my dad. He’d be thirty in December.”

We all remember for a moment or two,
But when do we really ponder what these men do?
I’ll never forget what that boy said to me;
I’ll always remember, though I’m only a tree.is poem won