I am one of summer’s beauties,
And my roots grow deep and strong.
Yet the gardener is saying,
For his yard I am all wrong.
Here he comes now with his cutter,
Thinking he can chop me out.
Ha ha ha, now, Mr. Gard’ner.
That’s a part I’ll live without!
Though it’s true, my sun’s been clouded,
Since that gardener moved in,
Since he only farms “organic,”
I am sure that I will win!
Oh, but now he’s got weed killer!
This I don’t think I’ll survive.
Farewell, yellows! I am fading ….
Keep your heads up! Stay alive!
To the wind now! To the wind now!
Scatter seeds o’er hill and dell!
We shall conquer! We shall conquer!
And our story we shall tell.
Though we lose to stronger forces,
One by one or field by field,
We shall ne’er forget our purpose,
And our cause we’ll never yield!
Though our virtues go unheeded,
As we grow in sidewalk cracks,
We’ll make sure your lawns are seeded.
Mr. Gardner, we’ll be back!
Though you hate us and berate us
And try to eradicate us,
We will serve the God that made us.
In the springtime, we’ll be back.
Dandelion was a poet.
Now his words waft on the wind.
Though the gardener did mow it,
Words, like seeds, begin again.
This poem first appeared in Westward Quarterly (2021).
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Christie Waldman is the author of The Voice of the Wooden Dragon (NFB Publishing, 2024), a fantasy novel for young readers. Her short stories for children may be read online at East of the Web, Skipping Stones, and Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Francis Bacon’s Hidden Hand in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’: A Study of Law, Rhetoric, and Authorship (Algora Publishing, 2018).
