Today, Day 497 of the daily new poems, our poet Jane Monach celebrates the dandelions of Springtime. And it is 13 April – Irish poet and Nobel Prizewinner Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was born this day 85 years ago in Belfast. Like Heany, our poet Jane has an Irish background, and like Heaney moved from Belfast to Dublin. But did Heaney write any poems about dandelions? Sometimes a mention. “… the east gable / Was starkly a ruin again, with dandelions / Blowing high up on the ledges,” (from ‘The Mud Vision’) however it is Jane who graces our page today, smiling with the smiling golden flowers.
Little suns
They’ve cheered me up this year
these ‘nuisances’,
their crowns of gold
stringed together, fit for garlands
round the king of animals.
It’s lion’s teeth they’re named
when in full bloom:
denti di leoni
dienti de leon
Löwenzähne.
The Finns declare them
Voikukka, butter flowers
perhaps yearning
to spread their colour
over thick rye bread.
Dotted about prized lawns
dandelions are cursed.
Eaten by enfants français
they’re cursed – blamed
for wet beds – pissenlits.
Once I thought that early orange-tips
had brushed their fragile wings
against the leaf-blades’ intense colour
to fly off afterwards
with striped edges.
I praise their merriment
their boldness
their bright petallage.
Dandelions light me up,
they smile and I smile back.
Jane Monach