The Yew Tree

Each year with the falling of the leaves we shall remember them,
As the years drift into the silence of longing -
The longing for the ones who never came back.

A photograph, dimmed by time, is all that remains;
A lock of hair, a memory, a name, each evoking
A man that lived and breathed and laughed.

Poets and dreamers, craftsmen and lovers
Farmers and ploughmen, boys from the shires
Fallen leaves in the autumn, returning to the soil.