Catherine Chandler
Dandelion

“Love is like the lion’s tooth.”
—W. B. Yeats, in “Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At the Dancers”

Grown old, she saw a reason to compare
the lowly lion’s tooth to love. I’m prone,
as well, to think it highly overblown,
ubiquitous, a gardener’s despair.
And though its wine is heady, sweet, beware
of leaves jagged with bitterness. Condone
the mad, outrageous simile, and own
your green intoxications, if you dare.
Don’t try to nip it. All you’ll ever get
is a wilting weed, dead in half an hour.
But left alone to flourish, rampant, free,
its milky stem will bear the brazen flower
that winks at herbicide and soubriquet,
and dances June away, defiantly.

NB: This poem was previously published in the British poetry magazine Candelabrum in April 2007.

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #2: Winter 2008, Volume 1 Number 2