POUR, TEAR, CARVE
Dandelion Clock
By Emily Decker
—after Jeanne Silverthorne’s Dandelion Clock, 2012
When we become too much
for ourselves and our little lives,
how we burst from our frames,
glowing with our waste, wasted!
An unseen blow—sometimes
our own—has undone us,
once-golden flower crowns,
now bleached the color of bones.
We cannot contain what we lose,
as our parasol filaments parachute
down, reminding us only that we are
seed and will become seed again.
Jeanne Silverthorne Dandelion Clock, 2012. Platinum silicone rubber, phosphorescent pigment, and wire 51 1/4 x 29 1/8 in. Purchase, The Hereward Lester Cooke Memorial Fund, 2014. Courtesy The Phillips Collection.
Emily Decker is a writer and editor who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. A Virginia native raised in Ghana and then in Atlanta, Georgia, she holds a master's degree in Education from Georgia State University. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.