Emerging Yellow

When I look at the charred plasma of a bare knuckled wind I forget yellow I forget the smeared tone of skunk cabbage rising through fog and mulch or how in Chiang Mai the river at sunset transforms a blistered heat into the stippled gold of temple lamps After the grey scuttle of urban hours there is a yellowed drizzle of twilight in any city when a chill haze of evaporation hangs gleaming and electric I see the mottled leaf of autumn how gold seeps through its flamboyant carnage away from the ruby panic of fledgling mouths or the crimsoned wounds of flowers I seek a tint an irreducible essence a yellow, not oxidize like blood in the light of day