Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Dandelion
The dandelion's death
Brings forth from its skeleton
Birth by the thousands
Floating its legacy on the wind.
Where will it land?
A riverbed, dry
Cracked from the heat
Dust and hard clay now
Not a chance of a life.
Keep floating, my friend.
Rain doesn't reach us
Cool wind never dares
Shadow and shade,
and the promise of aid
Are a mockery. A memory.
All you will find here is
Sun, scorching sun,
blanching dirt, cracking ground
quiet beyond quiet
Empty, forgotten, no life. No form
But the rocks who are useful
to lizards and snakes
as they hide from the sun,
From the buzzards, the heat
The endless hum of nothing
Take rest here, reprieve
For a bit. Just a bit
Dig a root underneath me
make your home for awhile
find a droplet of moist in my soil
Bury roots in my ground
Til you find what you need
Make it deep, slow and steady
You may hide 'neath my wall
of packed sandstone and shale
Here you will find a respite
relief, just enough to fix life
into your long stem, your green stem
Following up to a bright
yellow flower springing forth for awhile
Till it dries and it dies
and it's seeds tear apart in the wind
on the wind, in the scorching sun
Just begun with the cycle again
It will always find a way.
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