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Catherine Ulrich

I know a field that is preserved in its wildflower form, each blade of grass and dandelion seed miraculously chosen as the survivors of what used to be; the ground that held the fertile happenings of insects, field mice, and all kinds of flora now sits dormant and a little lonely, I’m sure, beneath the houses and pavement of the neighborhood. No one can remember what those hills looked like, covered with flowers. But the dandelions do.

Sometimes I go to a field and lay there to share the sun’s warmth with the mice, to feel the rain pat on my shoulders like it pats on the grass blades, to breathe in the same wind as those dandelions, swaying… I watch them, day by day, and always in their place when I come to visit, the dandelions grow. And I’m growing, too. No one can see me aging minutely through the moments of my life. But the dandelions do.

Someday, when those bright yellow flowers lose their petals and so, their pride and their youth, and have become fragile and soft with age, I will pick one. And I will blow the flower, with all of its memories, into the wind. And from my breath to the breeze, I hope a secret dandelion seed catches