Dandelions BY PETER CAMPION
After the cling of roots and then the “pock” when they gave way the recoil up the hand was a small shock of emptiness beginning to expand. Milk frothing from the stems. Leaves inky green and spiked. Like blissed-out childhood play turned mean they snarled in tangled curls on our driveway. It happens still. That desolating falling shudder inside and then our neighborhood seems only sprawling loops … like the patterns eaten on driftwood: even the home where I grew up (its smell of lingering wood-smoke and bacon grease) seems just a shell of lathe and paper. But this strange release follows: this tinge like silver and I feel the pull of dirt again, sense mist uncurling to reveal no architecture hidden behind the world except the stories that we make unfolding: as if our sole real power were the power of children holding this flower that is a weed that is a flower.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2010) reprinted with permission from the author, illustrated by Caitlin Skaalrud, MFA ’21
COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS
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