poem

 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