In Praise of Dandelions

Photo Credit: Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Note: Here is an ode addressed to dandelions I wrote in grad school. It’s a bit more lyrical than what I normally post; but as gardens and lawns proliferate with these detested yellow flowers in my corner of the world, I thought now might be a good time to share it:

Here you are, a round of yellow rays. They call you weed, gardener’s bane, farmer’s foe, destined to ignominy or death by trowel. Suits spend coffins full of coins inventing poisons to dissolve you. Overalls spend days uprooting you, hefting you into plastic bags to wither alone. Yet you are strong for all your apparent smallness and resist the gravity of earth each spring. You defy uncreating hands.

Nearly lost in wisps of grass, you are trampled under boots, paws, wheels. If not hated, forgotten. Forgotten how your petals mellow to wine. How you graced Victorian sandwiches plated in lace. How your blanched leaves nourish, iron in their palms. How your roots roast to coffee. Sages trapped in shelved books say you are a healer. You purify blood, bowels, bodies, purging dross. You unquease stomachs, blanch bruises, bend unbending joints.

Bees overflow their crops in nectar fountaining from your throat, and paint a world of sweet fruit and green. Milk pools in the hollow of your stem. Fruit-ripener, cradle of butterflies, enricher of earth. Only children honor you, gather bouquets of tiny suns in sweaty fists and proffer them to mothers in crumpled sleeves at sinks. Small fingers weave you into floret crowns, imagination dignifying queens.

Autumn breathes you into a hundred seeds, ivory afros, feathered parachutes. Children wish upon you and scatter the seeds, wind-carried across Europe, Asia, North America. Your name follows the curves of geography: blowball, cankerwort, doon-head-clock, witch’s gowan, milk witch, yellow-gowan, Irish daisy, wet-a-bed, swine’s snout, monks-head, priest’s-crown, puff ball, faceclock, wild endive, butter flower, worm rose. You are a holy thing, or a defiled depending on the stretch of road.

You are a halo of fire, a nimbic glimpse of Eden in petals. Your face beams a spectrum of yellows—lemon, butterscotch, canary, pineapple, marigold, honey—presses to the earth, curved low with the violets and worms. But up you look, sunward, from a curve of green neck. You are meek and bold, devoid of luxe and dazzle and costume, cloaked in ordinariness, so rooted in ground.

You are merely alive and yellow, a ring of gold and flame for those who see.

***

This series is inspired by my new book In Praise of Houseflies: Meditations on the Gifts in Everyday Quandaries (Calla Press) now available for purchase.Click here to join my e-letterfor more quiet reflections, book updates, and a few of my favorite things!