Dandelions (a poem)

Monday, October 6, 2025

There is a creeping out of the skin — the dandelions dance like small alarms, that David, wild-ass man, grins while tops spin, speeded into dirt.

We learn the rationale: to go to war with your own people, to name the neighbor enemy and call it doctrine.

The breakers speak in bad words, rewrite the book with blunt hands; this is what your Bible says, they say — you can’t read, let me tell you.

Compiling is the way: we gather, separate chaff from heart, thresh the citizens of any opposition — thresh, thresh — hands moving like old mills.

Straw and forks pitched across the yard, turn up the soil, Daddy fell down again; we pass the motion down the line, teach the motion to the mouths.

Thresh, thresh — deploy our money militarily against our own will; we arm the ledger, we bankroll the hunger, we fund the fences that keep us safe from our own questions.

Dandelions, I miss your singing — the small hymn beneath the boots, the yellow mouths unclaimed by law.

Gather round, those people there, the ones not listening; point your fingers, stitch the badge on tight — watch the mirror tell you who you are.

And when the badge peels, when the seam gives, what remains is only breath and the small seed of a flower that keeps on opening, unbothered, stubborn, singing.