Dandelions

At the spring writing event last Saturday, Richarde gave us a beautiful metaphor for the group formerly known as the Sun Belt Writing Project: dandelions. I just loved the image she drew of a patch of dandelions, the wind spreading their seeds. They've always been one of my favorite flowers. Jackson has recently discovered dandelions. He chortles with delight and chants, "Flow! (flower) Yell-ow!" when he finds one. He reaches down, plucks a little bit of sunshine, hands it to me, then runs off to the next one. When he finds a seed head, he happily blows the seeds all over the yard. I remember when we first moved into our house and tried to keep up with our neighbor, who is ruthless in her determination to keep dandelions out and told me, "I'd rather have bare patches than weeds," as she cast as scathing glance at my yard. While we wouldn't go so far as to spray Roundup, we spent countless hours pulling up every dandelion in sight. Sure enough, the next day we'd go out and find more sunny smiles defiantly greeting us. I like to think that Sun Belt has the tenacity of dandelions.

Introduction

I'll be posting some poems from Napowrimo (National Poetry Writing Month) here starting April 1st. In an effort to keep the creative process moving forward and to avoid mental blocks, some poems will remain private. Happy writing!