Yellow

The yellow has come in a faint film stretched across the gravel road, glistening on the hoods of cars and faintly powdering the grass, dusting the stair rails and door handles. By the end of spring my shoes will be stained yellow from days and night of kicking pollen out of the earth; only after the autumn rain will the glow wash away.
People think the yellow comes from the dogwood, mostly because it's the only the only tree most people notice. The truth is, although the dogwoods are everywhere, the yellow comes from the pine trees; if you find one of its pine cones on the ground you'll find it caked in the yellow, packed thick in the nicks and groves.The pines in South Carolina are unnoticeable, straight and frail in the background of our lives, yet they are numerous enough to shroud our lives in this faint glow.
The Dogwoods force their presence this time of year. All winter long they have been nothing but gnarled black branches, and now suddenly overnight the entire state has been transformed into white. Tiny pale flowers form clouds around every house, in rows along highways, between roads and scattered around shops and parks. They reek; they smell faintly pungent and yet sickly sweet and the smell is thick in the air.
Red trees are blossoming right now, but I don't know what kind of trees they are. In the grass I see dozens of minuscule flowers, dots of colors scattered everywhere. On my walks I gather them and press them in my notebooks trying somehow to grab snippets of this beauty and keep it. Of course there's no point in that. All of this beauty will flourish and burn for another two months before it recedes into green, and then later to brown, and these pressed flowers will lay forgotten in a closed journal somewhere out of mind.