Friday Archive: Conquest in Yellow

A really cool post by my son-in-law Bryan on Bryan's Brayn reminded me about this poem in the archives.

I wrote the poem in the mid-90s and have revised it occasionally since then.

Conquest in Yellow

(Dandelions, not indigenous to North America, arrived sometime after European contact.)

The dandelions dare, taunting,

waving little bastard flags

that thrust above the lawn.

They spring, resurrected, 

from beneath my mower’s blades,

and carpet my earth in yellow laughter.

What single parent spawned this rousing rabble?

How did the first one come?

Did some subtle seed stow away

among damp hemp in dark ship’s hold,

holding off that business of beginning

until it found new shores?

Or was it sabotage?  Some canny slave

who slipped the seed among his rags

until it could be planted 

between the careful crops?

I like my story better.

It surely was a girl-wife, trying to be brave,

a Maggie or a Jane perhaps, who,

just before she boarded,

bound for brave new world,

picked one last flower 

and pressed it in her apron pocket.

The children of that flower, yellow-bright

would ease the strangeness of new door-step.

I know she coaxed it carefully,

rejoiced when it bore seed,

and when, in joy, she plucked the hardy stem

to blow, and blow,

the dandelion billowed and made 

swirling clouds of seed that tumbled

through her hair and pierced the ground

beneath her feet.

They mostly stayed close to home, 

but the wind caught three

and carried them two townships over, down beside a stream

where they grew

until their seeds were caught by the wind, too.