The encroaching season of the dandelion march
Yellow heads bobbing to Spring’s trumpeters
Here and there the neighborhood putters to life
  pushing rotating blades chugging grassland
She would prefer goats instead of gas hogs
But what does she know of suburbia etiquette
Warm water cascades from a garden hose
snaking from the kitchen faucet
Pup’s first outside bath of the year
Allergy gangs assaulting noses everywhere
The dog shampoo smells like cedar
Chests crammed with a dead season’s sweaters
Face upturned, drunk on sunlight
Her bronze four-legged god spelled backwards
shakes water from his fur
She hates herself for what comes next
Forcing his mouth open and dropping pills
down his throat as if feeding baby chicks
Her throat strangles whimpers
It’s okay now, one more lie heaped on top of another
He didn’t recognize her in the yard
becomes distracted by bumblebees
A dandelion is buttercup under his chin just like hers
Flower head wine so very different from his  
As long as he takes his pills he can stay
here with her
Mow swathes through grass, it always grows back
He doesn’t always have good days
This season of ruin’s hostile awakening
Day’s sentinels battering at the windows to be let in
not unlike occupying armies taking over
home and hearth
Be still, be still, she whispers in the dog’s ear
His head nestled on her chest
I won’t let them in to steal your breath
Pretend it’s still winter
We’re hibernating bears

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