"Dandelions" by Nicholas Bonarski

For years the school bus took the same path past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours each day the fields flickering past, sometimes filled with corn, autumn filled with hay bales that long swinging arm of the sprinkler tempting in the summer heat, always running as we’d drive back to your house on the way home from town and one year, many years later homesick, soul-wandering spied dandelions growing, a trove near the treeline and parked near the ditch to sit for a moment with my thoughts all running rampant when they turned to you, and childhood how second grade best friends lived extremes up and down the hill, across the trampoline riding top speed on gravel roads I used to ride my bike to you, we lived close enough to each other it was possible for my little body to pedal itself there and back without exerting what it can’t spend what it doesn’t have, maybe still lacks the dandelions far across the field yellow bright mirage in the distance I would walk there now if you’d meet me. ————————————– Nicholas Bonarski called us from Grand Rapids, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems