I guess I’ve just spent too much time wandering around the neighborhood recently looking at all the amazing flowers. The Flower Moon is more than doing her job this year, calling beauty into the world. So when I saw the ravaged poppy I was sad.

Sad at first, because who does that. Ok, squirrels, but they’re squirrels and they just tear things apart. But this was ripped off at the stem and discarded. I can even accept, although they’re not yours, plucking a flower to enjoy. But this was not that.

I have a lot of poppy memories. I live with a lot my mother’s poppy paintings. Our wedding ketubah is passionate with them. And I have smiled at fields and gardens of them in a lot of places in the world.

My reaction about this, however, somehow took me right to the “In Flanders Field the poppies grow…” that sad, evocative WWI poem… There it was, a brilliant splash of red lying broken in the street. As we do with flowers, so we do with people.

I don’t want to make peace with that, I want, rather, to call for and make Peace. No more ruined flowers. No more ruined lives. Let there be Peace on Earth. Let us understand that Life is sacred. Let’s start that now.