The Dandelion Poem by Kevin Patrick

A delicate dandelion, stood; unassumingly
In the frozen rush hour pasture of thousands
Swaying brazenly to the subtle warm breeze
Like a giddy child running round a swimming pool
While jewels of yellow tresses licked by the sun
Beamed ostentatious merriment and pomp
As if God sent angels of cinema photography
To feed each floret under an intense spotlight
Leaving every strand a brighter shade of gold
Until it was nothing but a living painting
Inserted with a clandestine message that said:
“X marks the spot to heavens backdoor”

I saw it hanging their one bright blue afternoon
When solitary clouds are poached egg white
Pass the preassembled suburban skid rows
Hidden off the demilitarized zone of asphalt
It was cloistered between arches of tall grasses
Where it stood among the weeded throng
And then spoke to me inside its colour
And I knew it was all creation in a flower

Beneath the petals, beneath the arteries and veins
Inside the chloroplast within its breast
Deep within its molecules that make the chemicals
Down and down into the bases of primeval atoms
Coalesced into subatomic particles and beneath that:
The Universe and everything that ever was
Held together in the center of a solitary weed
Where only my senses could sharply see
The veil between worlds in which all things were


I looked at it half tense with trepidation
And another half with complete inebriation
To think this weed, this brat of unwanted seed
Was the key to paradise to all realities
Galaxies winked in the cusp of the blossoms
Nabulus scattered in clusters with comets
Entire solar systems formed, lived and died in moments
And then I saw God itself wave back to me
And in another moment gone, as if it had never been








I never saw paradise again, but I learned
You can find a universe in everything
If you look close… and then…
Watch its die and give birth again