Decay & Dandelions

I took a walk today, down by the river.

I pulled over to clear my mind.

I wandered for a while, between bison patties and riverbed

The recent rains made the plains into swamp.

As I walked, I found a tree

And before my eyes, the process of life unfolded

“From dust you came, to dust you shall return”

And the fallen tree showed this to me

At one end, roots as strong as the day it had fallen

And at the other, wood chips and dust, decaying to nothing.

I’ve never seen that before;

I’d always assumed trees decayed as a whole.

But here before me was the entire process,

Unfurling itself in one single instant.

I carried on from this encounter with death

Meandering aimlessly,

Toward an embankment I decided was my destination.

I arrived at its top, and I came upon a patch of dandelions

There they sprouted, mixed in with violets and greens.

The scene was beautiful, but it confronted me, suddenly;

Those dandelions are weeds, are they not?

Or, maybe they aren’t?

What is a “weed” anyway?

When I was younger, I always found the dandelions beautiful

But all the adults decided they were weeds

That they needed to be gone.

How could this plant, a beautiful flower,

Who in death had the power to grant wishes,

Be so terrible?

It chokes out the grass, the highest of all plants in our world

Was always the reply.

So, we spray each one with poison,

Taking from ourselves in the process.

“The honeybees are dying,” we cry,

All the while we kill the plants they need to survive

Replaced instead with an endless expanse of manicured green,

Giving nothing and getting nothing.

“Weed,” it seems to me, is just a term we’ve created

For disturbances in our carefully made plans.

Perhaps we should learn to see the beauty in the exceptions

And learn to see beyond the distinctions we’ve created.