A Dandelion

Dad and I sat in chairs on the deck enjoying a spring day.

I poured us a glass of a coconut roasted chocolate porter brewed in Ashland.

We sipped the beer, agreed it was terrible.

Dad looked down to the yard.

A single dandelion had somehow survived my mowing earlier that morning.

He asked me if he could quote a poem.

I said of course.

My 91-year-old father, closed his eyes, composed his mind, and then recited:

Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—innocent, golden,
calm as the dawn,

The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Who wrote that? I asked.

“Walt Whitman,” he said.

We discussed the poem

and then I dumped the porter onto the lawn,

careful to avoid the dandelion because I know it trusted my face

to let it blow to seed.