DANDELION

For my mother on her 90th birthday

The world is turning, turning

And my heart, like ransacked villages

Is burning, burning

“You need not chase the burning tree”

She says, in quiet soliloquy

“Just hunker down

In the rubble and watch as the dandelions

Grow through the cracks

From all those wishes of our embered childhood

Thrown like kisses to a future you.”

Today would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. Her body made other plans, exhausting itself in her early 70s; but, in my heart, we are still the people in this 1966 photograph.

A lioness, who, against all medical advice, suffered through a very difficult pregnancy, to bring a 5th child into the world.

Me, the “miracle baby”, born of black water, who continued to try to return to the heavens 5 times before this photo was taken.

How is it that we made it, I sometimes ask myself. Tenacity? Arrogance? Dumb luck? Prayers? Who can know.

What I do know is that I inherited all of those things from her, and have spent a lifetime railing against some of them before understanding that our story is just that, a story, playing out in my heart, and in a thousand stories since then.

And now, in my evening hours, I cherish each of these cursed gifts, knowing full well, that a dandelion spirit is indestructible.

Happy Birthday Dandelion!

Thank you for everything,

Lovebug