Pollen Season

It has been pollen season
with the air thick, with
dandelion seeds filling the sky
and cloying yellow dust on the cars.

People sneeze,
their eyes run, rheumy and bloodshot,
their voices rough and wheezy
with the dense dander of newly reborn trees.

Beneath your feet the corpses of flowers,
brown and open, their pods bereft
of seeds, all spent, their beauty sacrificed, all sent secretly
to fill the world for the year to come.

This is the price of spring, for
nothing comes without cost,
not even new life.

About this poem

Change, even good change, comes at a cost.

Tom