The Mowed Hollow

When yellow leaves the sky they pipe it to the houses to go on making red and warm and floral and brown but gradually people tire of it, return it inside metal, and go to be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. When we went down the hollow under the stormcloud nations the light was generalised there from vague glass places in the trees and the colours were moist and zinc, submerged and weathered and lichen with black aisles and white poplar blues. The only yellow at all was tight curls of fresh butter as served on stainless steel in a postwar cafe: cassia flowers, soft crystal with caraway-dipped tongues, butter mountains of cassia flowers on green, still dewed with water.