not the buttery froth of blossoming,
all show and defiance and sex, pulse,
sap, heads one morning in the grass,
eager little sun-warm erections
nor yet the gray spiritual
fluff clocks, sketching their skeletal
longing away from the earth,
that shiver toward the wind and go
but the downward clot of root,
unkillable, fibrous, that sucks wet
from the dirt, breaks upward,
digs in like teeth and grinds the stone
these are amazing, I can't decide which I like best, perhaps the last one because the beauty of it is so surprising.
ReplyDeleteMarion: perhaps beauty is always surprising, a rupture in the fabric of the ordinary (though i hesitate to apply the word here :-)
DeleteI see you are getting better at playing with your photo editing. I would have loved to seen the originals too...
ReplyDeleteThe dandelion poem reminds me that even us humans can be just like this dandelion.
Liz: we are like dandelions -- but which part? someone read this and objected, but it is all of these!, and i suppose that is true ...
DeleteWhat a lucky dandelion, there was never one so beautiful like yours... ;-)
ReplyDeleteLucia: thank you :-) but i think i was the lucky one ...
DeleteExquisite. Both words and photos.
ReplyDeleteDeb: thank you. you are very kind :-)
Deletehow necessary to see the full scale of it. how difficult to acknowledge the clot, the fibrous, the sucking, the enduring teeth. how stunning your language. how perfect that last photo. (and the soft reprieve of stalks of grass only, blurred and consoling me.)
ReplyDeletexo
erin
erin: when i saw the full scale of the dandelion, when i felt it as dandelion in the absolute, i knew how much larger it was than i ... this is necessary, yes ...
DeleteI wish my father had seen and read this ... He had a private war with dandelions and, as a child, I would grab them and blow the froth, and my father would rant. And I would cry, "But Daddy, they are so beautiful in the lawn."
ReplyDeleteI am truly only one quarter joking in this. I was about five and I meant it with all my heart. I had neither your photographs, nor your words. And now, I have them both at last. Isn't it strange how the small incident lives so vibrantly so very many years later? And how three pictures and a poem can let the memory fly away? Thank you, James.