The Dominion of Dandelions
This is a dominion of dandelions
A yellow speckled pox
Like a rash on the cheek
Of suburban sensibility.
I also put up yard signs
Advocating for lost causes
Everyone else has already
Given up on.
My neighbors file anonymous
Complaints with the HOA president—
Repeated violations of small print covenants
Honoring middle class probity—
Who saunters over, faux friendly,
When I’m bringing out the trash
Claps me on the back and hands
Me a few business cards
For local landscape crews,
Gives his regards to my wife
Saying her name, once again,
With the same fricative error
For the forty millionth time.
We’re a no drama neighborhood, he says
Before waddling back to his perfect verdancy
You’d think the clover and dandelions
Would metastasize beyond my yard
But they don’t. Nature knows her limits.
There’s a razor-slashed demarcation
Between mine and adjacent properties
As if all the neighbors had been preparing
For someone just like me
Booby trapping their perimeters
With chemical sprays and silent powders
Applied by professionals in gray coveralls
Hired to defend the honor of pointless expectations.
I don’t like to make waves
One summer I’ll fall into line
Despite this dispensation
For chaotic generativity.
But I’ll never admit to succumbing
To the numbing allure of respectable conformity.
No, I’ll blame it on all the bees
Lured by yellow flowers and sweet clover
And my kid’s alleged anaphylactic allergies.
My rebellion will go underground
Far below detector threshold—
A lone freedom fighter
Trapped deep behind enemy lines
Sending out signals
Hidden in the unpredictable
Lawn mowing patterns
I etch into my otherwise standard lawn—
A secret samizdat of cross-hatched weavings
Overlaid with cathedric arches and the traced
Curves of deep lake eels
Made fuzzy by the dozens
Of oscillating variances
Instantly recognized by people
Like us
8/19/24
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