Not the wood, which is white-to-beige-to-red,
nor the bark, nor the cones, not even the dying needles
gone brown directly from green:
what is yellow is the air around them
in spring, and the wind shadow cast from west to east,
as everything also on the face of the earth
within a mile of a forest of them is washed
by their pollen, paler and purer than saffron.
Everything plucked up from the ground
is likewise silhouetted there, a darkened absence.
Even those of us who sleep
on the other side of screens,
through which passes all night long
their silent, seemingly weightless golden breath:
we rise in the morning and see the sun
as it gleams around the shining rim
of where we lay our individual darknesses down,
the upper halves of us dusted, yellow, shining.