Momma Had a Baby...

and its head popped off. I have heard it said that dandelions are nothing more than a common weed- the scourge of the carefully groomed and chemically treated lawns of the suburbs. I remember bringing them home: a bouquet of slowly wilting dandelions flopping around in our chubby fists, slumping over and bopping around like drunken puppets in a rodeo. Mothers everywhere arrange these offerings from their children in jelly jars and whatever makeshift vases they can find. There they sit, on the kitchen counter mocking.... mom hates dandelions, she and dad just paid a lot of money to have the landscapers eliminate the leafy vermin from the yard, and yet there they are in the place of honor - the centerpiece of the dinner table. Dandelions aren't going anywhere. The roots of dandelions can extend over a foot down into the soil- the flowers themselves can grow up to well over one's knees, growing up through the pavement in a parking lot. You have to admire a flower that grows up through a crack in the pavement. That takes some grit. This is no pansy- it grows through cement. Tall and matter of fact, slim velevety stem gently curving up towards the sky, crowned with a golden afro. Eventually, as the season progresses, golden petals turn to soft white down. The back yard is alive with the bobbing grey heads of geriatrics, and when the time comes, a disturbance, in the form of a running animal, a late summer breeze, or a wishing child will stir the parachutes loose, setting them free on the breeze, to float to their future home. They will settle on the sides of highways, in the cracks in the pavement, and in the very yards of the people who just spent a fortune to eliminate their ancestors- they will grow where they wish when they wish, they will return to the yards of those who try to elminate them, and will make their way through the hands of a child into the premium blossom display locations on the coffee tables of suburbia. The dandelion is not a weed. It is the fuck you flower.