Poetry Friday: That’s Yellow

The prompt this week for the Nevermores (a poetry writing group at Inked Voices) was to write a color poem. I love writing color poems! I wrote them in classes with kids of all ages when I was teaching, so this exercise brought back many sweet memories.

I began by rereading a few of my favorite mentor texts – COLOR ME A RHYME by Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple, HAILSTONES AND HALIBUT BONES by Mary O’Neill and John Wallner, and RED SINGS FROM TREETOPS: A YEAR IN COLORS by Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski. I also reread “That was Summer,” a poem by Marci Ridlon. All of these texts have different structures and strategies to offer – strong verbs, repetition, use of senses, and more. After picking yellow as my color and jotting down a few ideas, I challenged myself to spend the next few days searching for, and thinking about, yellow. I had fun jotting ideas on scraps of paper, the Notes app on my phone, and of course, a notebook. The best thing about this process was that I had fun playing with ideas and words and lived up to the mantra I chose for 2022 – Enjoy the Process.

That’s Yellow

Do you know yellow?
Sure you do.

Yellow winks from the wing of a blackbird
and the ring of a grackle’s eye.
It sings with the wind chimes
and shouts a warning when it’s not safe to cross.

Yellow is the smell of sunshine in the sheets on the line.
It’s the promise hidden deep inside daffodils,
and under the feathers of the finches at the feeder.
It’s life inside an egg.

Yellow is that feeling you get
when a laugh starts bubbling up inside
and you can’t wait,
you just can’t wait
to let it out—
and neither can your best friend.

That’s yellow.
Draft, 2022 Rose Cappelli

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Please join the Poetry Friday group here where Ruth has a beautiful haibun, a new-to-me form that combines prose and haiku, about an early morning birding walk in her new home in Paraguay.

Thanks for reading!