Yellow

Near San Pedro

Everywhere I look, yellow. Yellow sun, yellow clouds, yellow flowers. The sun in the sky yellow and the flowers, also yellow, pull it to the ground. All around the hummingbirds whip back and forth, their tiny wings fanning my cheek as I pass. I am drenched in sweat and watch happily as dust wells up around my feet with each step. That lizard with the yellow spot is talking to me. He is saying eat a lemon, eat a banana, eat some yellow food. A turkey buzzard wheeling around above me is carrying a yellow snake in its talons. The yellow snake calls down to me: its not so bad. I'll be his dinner, but the view from up here is worth a death or two. In my dream, there was a yellow mushroom. It pulsed as though it had lungs. On the mushroom, a yellow ant and a yellow spider. I picked up the ant on my fingertip and read its mind. Suddenly I could see the yellow lightbulb on my lamp through its compound eyes. Yellow pulsed and sang to me. In the shower, I used yellow soap and yellow shampoo, but they did not turn me yellow. The imp inside me laughs when yellow comes. Welcome yellow, he says, come in yellow! Vincent loved yellow and his house was a yellow house. In it, he kept fresh yellow sunflowers and he painted them into immortality. He saw yellow with a magic and perfection that no one before or since has seen. He was the high priest of yellow, the president of yellow, the dalai lama of yellow. He tried to share his yellow with Gauguin, but the beast wouldn't have it. He was too consumed with his island girls. He was too involved with his pure cinnamon girls. He pried their legs open with promises and devotions, and paint smeared on canvas, never understanding the curative value of yellow. Tomorrow will be a blue day, but I say that today was full of yellow.