Yellow

Daffodils have no sense. The slightest hint of warmth and they push up through ivy, kudzu, unraked leaves, and the beer bottles and condoms on vacant lots. Sometimes they are the last visible sign of a house long gone. Kick at the dirt around a misplaced patch of daffodils and you may find a well, a foundation, a blackened hearth where some girl waited for daffodils and for spring. She shivered by the fire and dreamed of melting snow and tiny sprouts, the bright yellow of daffodils, the color of optimism, the shade of hope, the sign of unlikely survival.

Deb, so sweet and sad.

Thanks for the tag, Erika! I adore it. I may keep it for a long long time.

Victor, I like the new poem.

You wrote that last night, Victor? OK, another reason to be a Victor fangirl.

Oh Ginger, I just read yours. I love it. The first sentence really just says it, don't you think?

Thanks, Erika and Kristin. Yeah, the "Written Right Now" contest is weekly at the Frantic Rabbit reading, here in Worcester. The host, Gary, presents a strange-ass prize, and everybody has ten minutes to write a poem about it. Hopefully, Thessaly will post hers, which won, on her livejournal.

Ginger, your drabble reminds me of an ee cummings poem that I love:

In Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

I found it. It was just percolating around a little before it decided to quit playing hide and seek.

The Sunflower

The skirt was lemon yellow, cinched at the waist with broad black elastic and a row of hooks and eyes. Sleeveless yellow blouse with a low scoop neck that allowed the sun to reach nearly everywhere. I needed only shoes, until I saw them. Sitting there bold and bright in the spring sunlight at the outdoor gypsy market. Bright yellow fabric with a black wooden stacked heel. They begged to be worn, to tap a dance down the streets of Cadiz in merry revelry. To follow the sun like a flower in the field. So, I did that--in Spain.

I'm still trying to think of ideas for a drabble. I think I have fewer associations for yellow than for any other major color. Not sure why.

My new favorite research link from the British library: [link]

It's basically recordings, some nearly fifty years old, of people from different parts of England talking. So now if I want to hear a character better, all I have to do is find someone from the right place and listen in.

Oh, Sail, that's a lovely piece.

Thanks, Deb. There's so much I miss about Spain. This was just one small way of expressing that.