Yellow

The world outside my window is yellow, double saturated – once by the yellow accumulation on the panes of glass and once by powder inundated air.  The annual dust emitted from pine trees descends and every year feels shocking even though the onslaught is a repeat performance.   You’d think it would no longer astound me, but every year about this time my world turns yellow and I am in awe.

The first entry listed at dictionary.com in defining the noun yellow is “a color like that of egg yolk, ripe lemons, etc.; the primary color between green and orange in the visible spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 570 and 590 nm.”

Yellow is also defined in adjective and verb forms, but I’m sticking with the noun as the yellow of my day’s thoughts is surely a thing.  A spring thing.  Tomorrow is the official first day of spring but calendar or not there is no missing the color blasted action going on outside in South Carolina.  I sit in stunned amazement that there could actually be so much color of egg yolk everywhere. 

When you breathe outside the air smells fabulous.  And your sinuses fill with powder that requires a series of snot-locker cleaning sneezes.  The air seems to bear visual weight because it is thick with floating plant pollen whereas just days ago it offered no sensory sensation at all.  And you know that as much of the pollen we can see is matched by the rest we cannot emitted from plants whose pollen is much smaller than that of the pine.  Eyelids get puffy.  Heads feel swollen.  Noses run.  And we query, why must this happen every year?  But we know, plant procreation. 

Pollen is amazing potential male matter on a mission.  From Wikipedia I learned that each pollen grain contains vegetative, non-reproductive cells (only a single cell in most flowering plants but several in other seed plants) and a generative, reproductive cell containing two nuclei: a tube nucleus and a generative nucleus that divides to form two sperm cells when proper pollination occurs.  All that microscopic virility is floating around looking for a receptive place to land and join with the female half of the genetic material needed to keep on keeping on.  Amazing!  Allergy inducing.  And yellow. 

 

Yell, Oh!

dewy blonde daffodil faces sing, look at me!  look at me!

silt of pine tree sex sifting sufficiently through the air coating

every surface and cranny, cars, porches, sidewalks, swings

even open eyeballs in a fine dusting of golden grit, silent

signs of other living creatures insuring their seasonal survival

soon washed as yellow chalk streams in short showers

dogwood blooms center open four pure petals, pervasive

honeysuckle scented sunlight tantalizes tiny human hairs

across winter-pale faces, inhaled specks insure sneezing

seeing obvious signs, flaxen flip-flop lemonade sundress time

as cool buttery mornings proffer crisp apple-flesh air, sweet

smelling spring releasing colorful reproduction everywhere