Summer Splash Supplement 2010
Dandelions
i.m. Larry McBride
Only the day before I had hugged
his wife and shared earnest handshakes
with his two fine children. Now,
returning from the wake on county roads
flanked by dandelion-crowded ditches,
for seventy miles or so I was talking
aloud to myself, trying to describe
those weeds in the morning sun.
Mostly the metaphors sounded weak;
salt grains cast across a plate, or seeds
spread wide by a sower's hand. Then it struck
me how, when a storm draws over a lake,
ragged drifts of rain will dapple the surface;
and it pleased me to think
of these useless yellow flowers like that:
numberless as raindrops.
That's how I spent much of the day,
thinking of words to describe great splashes
of passing weeds. Bound for home
in the prodigal freshness of early May
when plum trees daub the slopes,
and every farmyard gives away a clump of lilacs,
their lavender just barely breaking
into the already overflowing morning.
I drove further and further away from a life
in which I'd had, I began to realize, only a small stake;
driving across Wisconsin and needing to speak
the right words about dandelions.
“Dandelions” originally appeared in the chapbook Sundogs (Madison, WI: Parallel Press, 2006).
James Silas Rogers edits New Hibernia Review, a journal of Irish Studies published by the University of St Thomas. His chapbook Sundogs was published by Parallel Press in 2006. His poems have appeared in such publications as Nimrod, Spiritus, and Poetry East. His mixed-genre book (chiefly literary nonfiction) on cemeteries and sacred space will appear next year.