Hello, dVersifiers! Welcome to the bar.

Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s definitely spring. We leave a bit of our lawn uncut, and at the moment it’s sprinkled with dandelions. Love them or loathe them, they’re definitely bright. There are celandines in the hedgerows, yellow jasmine in next-door’s garden – the world is sprinkled with yellowness right now.

In the southern hemisphere I guess you’re heading into autumn. A different yellow, of faded leaves and ripened fruit. A gentler, mellower yellow.

Yes, tonight, we’re going to explore the world of yellowness.

It’s such a joyful colour. I can’t imagine a sad yellow (and I’m not sure I want to!). Unlike red and blue, you destroy yellow when you add black to it. You can make it dimmer or brighter, but you can’t darken it. It can be sharp like a lemon, or rich like honey. It can blare like a brass trumpet or whisper like a primrose.

Let me give you some yellow inspiration:

I have a book called Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours. His yellows are the yellows of

• Sulphur
• Primrose
• Wax
• Lemon
• Gamboge
• Kings yellow
• Saffron
• Gallstone
• Honey
• Straw
• Wine
• Sienna
• Ochre
• Cream

He finds yellow in all sorts of places – the yellow parts of dragonflies, wasps, yellow tulips, the head of the golden pheasant, canaries, honeysuckle.  Where do you find yellow?

Here’s Amy Lowell:

Breakfast Table

  In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl—and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: “Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!” Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.

And here’s Matthew Sweeney, with a whole host of yellows:

Five Yellow Roses

What stopped her bawling was the doorbell
ringing, and a man standing there with five
yellow roses, bulked up with green fronds
and tied in a dinky knot with olive twine.

There was no card to say who the flowers
came from. The man’s uniform was blue
with a brown insignia of a spider on his right
top pocket that she saw he kept unbuttoned.

As he waltzed down the path to the gate
the Siamese cat that frequented the garden
raised its back and hissed. The man laughed
and flounced out to his waiting white van.

Oh, the shit-faced side streets of life! OK,
she’d been born in Madras, in a flowery tea shop
while an albino conjurer magicked a hare
to leap from his heavily-ringed brown fingers.

Five yellow roses? Enough to encourage her
to cook saffron rice, with turmeric-tinged prawns
and sautéed yellow courgettes. She didn’t play
the Ry Cooder where yellow roses say goodbye.

Let’s have fun with yellow. You can write about the colour itself, or just sneak something yellow into your poem. A yellow bucket, a daffodil, an autumn leaf floating in a puddle. Let’s get to the yolk of the egg and the heart of the daisy. Let’s pour custard, let’s sprinkle turmeric, let’s smear mustard! Let’s yellow.

You know what to do:

• write a poem
• link to this post in your post
• link up to Mr Linky
• read and comment!