First color after dark and light,
color of new leaves and daffodils,
the ugliest color, some say, of wallpaper
madness, of my least favorite Beatles song, 
but also the color of my mother’s favorite
roses, of sun in children’s drawings,
and of the old house where Edith,
four foot nine, and Lou, six feet tall,
weathered the Great Depression with
boarders and day laborers, where
Aunt Ollie made her famous cake—
chocolate, not yellow, without eggs
neither whites nor yellow yolks, only
powders and vinegars, which no longer
keep the old linens white. The nearest
word refuses to rhyme, there’s nothing
mellow here, only fortitude, nascent
and senescent, our least favorite ages:
the quick of life, near the surface,
unbearable.