Dandelions

What is easily dismissed still has a place in the living world

Dandelion, Photo by the Author (iPhone)

We are quick to pluck, to clear what doesn’t
belong, because the grass wouldn’t be as green.
But did you know dandelions are the first
sweetness bees taste in spring? Golden and brave,
they rise through frostbitten soil before tulips,
before lilacs, before the manicured bloom
of beauty that arrives late and praised. We call them
weeds, but what is unwanted still serves.
What we overlook may be someone’s only hope.
I think of this on quiet days, when I wonder
if I’ve offered anything worth keeping.

First Published in Three Panels Press, Issue 05: Honey and Ash

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“Dandelions” continues the slow reorientation that began with “The Time It Takes to See” and deepened in “Listening.” It grew out of that same attentiveness, but it turns toward judgment—mine, and ours. Once I slowed down enough to see and hear the natural world more clearly, I began to question the habits I’d carried: what I deem useful, what I dismiss as unwanted, what I’m quick to remove because it disrupts a chosen idea of beauty. I first really understood this from reading Margaret Renkl’s “The Comfort of Crows,” where she writes about the small, everyday lives of the natural world and how often value goes unnoticed simply because it doesn’t fit our expectations.

This poem is part of a return—to humility, to patience, to a broader definition of worth. If the earlier poems were about seeing and listening, “Dandelions” is about reckoning: with usefulness, with belonging, and with the quiet hope that even what is easily dismissed still has a place in the living world.

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As always, a huge THANK YOU for taking the time to read my poem. Without you, my voice would be a whisper just floating in the air.

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