YELLOW

“Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.” - Seneca

The context of our existence changes our experience of the same stimuli. Sun warms, sun burns; flowers we can delight in or flowers can repel us; an odour attracts us and the same odour can seem noisome; an appealing pallor can become a loathsome sickliness… Our feelings colour the perception of our world and our emotions filter the impressions we process inside our head.

Yellow

Yellow was the sun high up
Warm the beams that gilded us.
Yellow was the wheat that ripened
On sun-drenched field.
Yellow was the daisy
Looking at the sun.
Yellow was your hair
Soft, sunlit and shining.

Yellow, burning orb
The sun blazes, scorches.
Yellow, the wheat that rots
On yellow muddy soil.
Yellow the daisy dried, singed
By drought and unrelenting sun.
Yellow your hair, fading,
Now only a memory.

Yellow was the dress you wore,
The muslin golden in the sunlight.
Yellow were the sunflowers
I gave you, each a shining sun.
Yellow was the lemon
That you picked, sweet-tasting.
Yellow was the saffron
That we dined on, exquisite.

Yellow, the tatters of your dress
Rags, now in the wardrobe.
Yellow, the pollen stains
Of long-dead sunflowers.
Yellow, the lemons
Hanging, all unpicked, all bitter.
Yellow, the saffron
Now uneaten, ghastly.

Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday