• IT caught my eye that breezy summer’s day as I sauntered past, a lone, blood-red poppy that had somehow battled its way through the low, white, jagged stone of our neighbour’s front garden wall.

That must have been a quiet, solitary battle it had fought and won, I thought, admiringly. Over how long, I couldn’t say, nor whether in the years to come it would return to the fray.

And yet somehow, for all its beauty, its innocent tranquillity, that poppy triggered images from an altogether different battlefield, of soldiers deep in mud, rifles raised, scrambling over the top, of upturned carts and cannons, the pall of smoke from exploding shells, the rats, the rain, the bodies lying where they fell.

As I replayed in my mind those black-and-white scenes from hell that flicker annually, in memory, across our screens, the lone poppy continued to sway in the morning breeze. No bugle calls disturbed its easy peace that day. No rose-tinted words. No attack. No retreat. Just cars racing down our winding street.

But then I saw, above that solitary hero, two white butterflies circling one another, rising, swooping, in a delicate pas de deux, bringing their own magical tribute and salute, making me feel suddenly up-beat and resolute as they rose together above the traffic’s roar towards the open sky, and continued to soar.

JEREMY ROBSON