Mellow Yellow


I don’t really think I sound mellow

It’s true I mark time and rhyme here and there

to say what I want to: I now bellow

and rant at inevitable gray hair,

The change, a move from the front to the back of the car

or to the ghost static ship in a bottle

with thick masted sails, frozen on the sand bar

of experience that threatens to throttle

all movement: sand grains of time that don’t swerve

but drop. A song remains, but it is black

and blue and echoes emotions that curve

more from memory than time’s small bright crack

Of light as I savor the taste of fear

that keeps singing that life’s all there is here.


Stephen Morse
February 2001