Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

The Dandelion
by Martin Willitts

THirty-FIFTH
Contest
Honorable Mention

It lets loose its last breath
white seeds jumbling as if acrobats in air.
Every dream, every love they’ve ever had
was written where we could see it.
Every circumstance of survival
for the next generation
containing yellow faces turned to light
were considered.

They have laid down this life to possess
the next. Seeds flicked in wind,
music notes weeping for the future
they would never see, praying for the next.

As a child, I counted yellow petals,
making wishes that never came true.
I would leave some
just to witness them unburden
their testimony,
determined to survive.

I blew on them
to hasten them on their journey:
tiny white ballerinas with white tiaras
on their haloed heads.

Even then, I understood their need,
searching across the tender fields
for a place to settle
like displaced immigrants.

Even then, I understood.

About the Author
Martin Willitts Jr has written twenty-four chapbooks including “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), which received the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, plus sixteen full-length collections including the recipient of the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”.