Anne, Patron Saint of Dandelions

Anne, Patron Saint of Dandelions

You loved the small gold uprisings in the grass,

those bright, stubborn lanterns everyone else called weeds.

You saw a kingdom where others saw invasion,

a thousand yellow crowns lifting through the ordinary.

And you were like them, Anne – radiant, doughty, unafraid

to bloom in hard places, to shine against the blade.

Even when illness darkened the weather of your body,

you kept that fierce, impossible colour in the world.

Now yards and fields are full of your beloved rebels,

their silk-white wishes soon loosening into the air.

I think of you there, not gone but scattered into grace,

While your ashes lie quiet among the dandelions you crowned.

Back in the 1990s, when we lived in suburban Sainte-Foy, Quebec, our neighbours doused their lawns with weekly torrents of toxicity, cheerfully supplied by a local firm called ChemLawn.

One particularly prolific dandelion douser was a dude whom we dubbed Pesticide Pete, although he was closely rivalled by his arch next-door rival, Barbecue Billy.

We were the only household in the vicinity that eschewed this toxic quick fix, and a neighborhood posse soon formed to shame us into compliance with the prevailing norms.

Dandelions are remarkably nutritious plants

Anne loved dandelions and also suffered from chemical poisoning in her native Czechoslovakia, so she single-handedly staved off all neighbourly entreaties and threats.

This little poem is dedicated to my friend Connie Hueston of London, Ontario, whom I knew as a brilliant golfer in the 1960s and who loves dandelions and called Anne their patron saint.