Dandelions: Poetry and Art

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

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Please tear off this BACK cover!

We don’t often encourage readers to take covers off of publications, but in this case, we’re making an exception. Just inside, on the last-but-not-least page of this issue, you’ll find our gift to you. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, acclaimed poet and Associate Professor of English Peter Campion generously gave permission to use his timely — and timeless — poem “Dandelions” as inspiration for cartoonist and visual artist Caitlin Skaalrud (MFA ’21). Caitlin is a past recipient of the Josephine Lutz Rollins Fellowship in Art. Our hope is that you will post the page where it can be read and viewed regularly as a reminder of the profound influences found within the seemingly small moments encountered throughout life.