i don’t know what makes a daffodil 

          a flower

and a dandelion 

          a weed

neither are cosmically significant

      yet 

          somehow

the closest we come to touching the sun

with feet         rooted         to         earth

 

i wonder 

who decided a daffodil was

                                         a flower

        but a dandelion wasn’t

 

who taught my mother to frown

and call the perennials in our neighbors’ yard

                 poor         lawn         maintenance

       when they’re actually

                 an analogy for human infestation

maybe it’s because they twine up 

from cracks

                 that break         her         back

 

it’s because of us the dandelion 

                 is trampled 

                           in garden fringes

aging into softness and whispered desires 

as it withers, our hopeful breath

                 scatters seeds on the wind 

one         old         dream 

becomes a hundred         new         delusions

 

a dandelion is 

          a         wish        we cannot help making

because if it doesn’t come true

it’s easier to 

                 blame         the         dandelion 

                            than ourselves 

 

i love the daffodil

                 but i pity the dandelion

torn from its grassy cradle, labeled a nuisance

for the         crime         of growing

          a flower’s

                  nature is 

                            to blossom

yet dandelions are         resented         for it

 

we should encourage those rarities 

brave         enough         to         bloom

our world already has a deficit of yellow

let the dandelion be free 

                  to        thrive        among daffodils