Yellow Mercy

January 11, 2020

THREE YELLOW GIFTS OF FRESH MERCY

1. When they first came out, LED lights glared at you with white intensity. Linda didn’t like them. “They’re cold,” she claimed, and I had to agree. We liked the old incandescents, and changed them back as soon as we could. We have visions of Thomas Kincaid paintings, with their little dots of yellow peeking through windows or glowing from streetlamps, duskily illuminating the shadows. Yellow light is soft and inviting, welcoming us into intimate and safe spaces. It’s imagination, I know, but emotion has it’s own reasoning, and we still like yellow light.

2. The seeds are black, and the bluejays, chickadees, cardinals, and squirrels love them, scattering their hulls over the terrace out back. The bounty of those black seeds blesses us with beauty as we watch the blue jays quarrel and the cardinals skulk warily to the feeders. Black oil sunflower seeds wreathed in golden yellow are gift to the eyes before harvest and gift to the birds afterwards, before becoming our gift.

3. I can’t think of another yellow gift. It’s not Linda’s favorite color, nor mine, and rather than waste time fretting about what I can’t conjure up even after an entire day’s thought, I’ll be grateful for two gifts of yellow mercy.