Plastic Poppies

They’re closing the downtown Legion soon, taxes are too high, what with gentrification and only a few of the regulars are vets. The younger associates, whose parents or grandparents served, can drive to the new place out on the Watson Parkway. But most of the old ones don’t drive anymore and it’s a long bus ride. Not that it matters, the associates are just there for cheap beer and don’t want to hear rambling stories from senile old vets and anyway. it’s now one hundred years since the “war to end all wars” ended. Christ, even Wicki notes that the phrase “originally idealistic is now used sardonically.” Yet I’m glad to give my toonie to the shivering cadets outside the Farmer’s market and double pin the plastic poppy to my coat, hoping that it will last till November Eleven. To show for a brief while that I remember.