The following poem appears in the chapbook, These Hands Still Holding. It first appeared in The Healing Muse (October, 2013).
Dandelions
In memory of Virginia G.
In the grass beneath the lilac, I find a bouquet
of dandelions,
gathered, I know, by my two daughters,
who are still young enough to see
bright beauty in spring lawns flecked with yellow,
to want to clutch that beauty in their hands, and then
to let it go,
forgotten in the sunlight,
so that it is not until hours later
that I find what they have left, and know
that it was meant for me,
to add to the bouquets of other days
that grace the kitchen table.
But these blossoms are all gone,
not merely withered, but turned already
to soft halos of white down, loose and lifting in the breeze,
as though each flower, knowing
the nearness of death,
had spent its last force willing its whole being
oward its young,
so that some beauty of its life
might yet live on.
Dandelions
In memory of Virginia G.
In the grass beneath the lilac, I find a bouquet
of dandelions,
gathered, I know, by my two daughters,
who are still young enough to see
bright beauty in spring lawns flecked with yellow,
to want to clutch that beauty in their hands, and then
to let it go,
forgotten in the sunlight,
so that it is not until hours later
that I find what they have left, and know
that it was meant for me,
to add to the bouquets of other days
that grace the kitchen table.
But these blossoms are all gone,
not merely withered, but turned already
to soft halos of white down, loose and lifting in the breeze,
as though each flower, knowing
the nearness of death,
had spent its last force willing its whole being
oward its young,
so that some beauty of its life
might yet live on.