Why Were the Poppies

We have to be breathing right to hear it, the silence in which all song arises; we have to be breathing slow and gentle and not to be staring angrily at the world. We have to be breathing right to feel it, the tenderness in which we are held by nature. We have to be breathing quiet and soft and to be looking receptively,without desire. We have to be breathing right to recall it the music we heard when there was silence. We have to be being breathed by the world We have to be part of the whole.. and so,we forget it as we are pounded by noise of radios and TVs by people talking loudly on cell phones by the green fields and river by the secret heron by the coots nest by the daisies When I am dying I shall think, Why was I not breathing right? Why was I scarcely breathing? Why did I forget those moments? Why did I not live more deeply? Why did i not sing more sweetly? Why did I nor love more dearly? Why did i not listen more carefully? Why did I not sing more sweetly? why did I not see more completely? Why don't we talk more gently? Why don't we look more intently? Why were the poppies growing so wildly? Why were the battlefields growing nightly? Why did we murder men so lightly? Why did we not love more rightly? Why are the poppies covering the soil so politely? When did the young soldiers leave so frightfully? Why are we not here more quietly?