Dad and I sat in chairs on the deck enjoying a spring day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I poured us a glass of a coconut roasted chocolate porter brewed in Ashland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sipped the beer, agreed it was terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dad looked down to the yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A single dandelion had somehow survived my mowing earlier that morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He asked me if he could quote a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I said of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My 91-year-old father, closed his eyes, composed his mind, and then recited:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass\u2014innocent, golden, The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Who wrote that? I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWalt Whitman,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We discussed the poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n and then I dumped the porter onto the lawn,<\/p>\n\n\n\n careful to avoid the dandelion because I know it trusted my face<\/p>\n\n\n\n to let it blow to seed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10019,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10016\/revisions\/10019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
calm as the dawn,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n