Breathe In Sweet Bouquets

by Guest Blogger, Dawn Downey

I was the only black person touring 30 Americans--an exhibit of American life seen through the lens of thirty contemporary black artists. I felt out of place among the white onlookers, even though I was an onlooker, too, gawking at my own life. Four hundred years of black emotions—mine, the artists’, our ancestors’—compressed into claustrophobic passageways and alcoves. 

I chuckled at a historical montage of black hair. Yup, I’ve used that hot comb, endured the sizzle and odor of burning hair. I levitated with joy at the human-shaped sculpture made entirely of flower blossoms. You couldn’t identify gender, race, or age. Yes, let me see only gardenias when I look at my enemies. Let me breathe in sweet bouquets, instead of noxious opinions. But as soon as each happy piece disappeared from my sight line, its inspiration evaporated. 

Maybe I have a greater capacity for despair than optimism. Despite the intermittent uplift, four hundred years squeezed me down to: It’s hopeless to be black in America.  


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Dawn Downey

How to Make Peace with Nature: Part II by Dawn Downey, Guest Blogger

 On the way to the mailbox, I leaned over to pull out dandelions popping up through the cracks in the driveway. I grabbed sturdy leaves in a bunch, my knuckles scraping concrete, and I yanked. Another plant seemed to pop up every time I plucked. They were cartoon dandelions, each tap root connected to the top of another dandelion in the ground beneath it, whose tap root was connected to the next, an endless chain all the way down to China. That's it. Time for reinforcements.

Give me fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, and any other cides on the market.

The idea shriveled up, dead on the vine. A sensation I'd never felt before crept across my sweaty palm, informing me I would not be using any weed killer. It stopped my bomb-'em-back-to-the-stone-age plans as effortlessly as a red light stops my car.

I quit using chemicals in the yard a couple years ago, because of the environmental impact on ground water and pollinators. Blah blah blah. This new feeling didn’t give a hoot about all those fancy words. It was unimpressed by my intellectual prowess and unconcerned with ecological issues. It simply zapped away the distance from between Dawn the Gardener and Betty the Bee.

I'll pull weeds by hand. Spraying poison would be shooting myself in the foot. Lesson two: disarm. 

Yard Work

Dawn Downey, Guest Blogger

When spring temperatures soared to sixty, I ventured on to the patio.

My pots bore the corpses of last summer's annuals and milkweed competed with dandelions and thatch where there ought to be grass and my hoses sprawled in muddy tangles and our ground cover (cultivated from ivy sprigs out of Julie's yard, although she warned me against the idea) sneaked under the neighbor's fence and . . . .

In the film, Into Great Silence, a monk sweeps a monastery walkway. The seasons pass. He rakes leaves, shovels snow, and in the spring, he sweeps again. Doesn't suffer. Sweeps.

Lost in Great Noise, I suffer.


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