Square Butte Grainery, Montana

Showing at the Daily Coffee House in Bozeman, Montana

What Colors?

My middle name is CRAYOLA.
I’ve been wrapping myself in color
since I was old enough to choose
ribbons, anklets, scarves.
My patron saint, Iris,
goddess of the rainbow
offers a sky so many hues.
How I must have lusted
for the cadmiums, thalos,
alizarins when the child, me,
looked out a window and never saw brown.
Across our Brooklyn backyard
vermillion and ochre bricks
went zing across my retina.

Bless our Montana winters, redeemed
by splashes of red-twig dogwoods
growing beneath a wash of palest orange,
the all-glowing limbs of golden willows.
If you were an apprentice
in the studio of the angels
wouldn’t you whimsically want
to wipe out white?
I came into this world understanding
the connection between monochromatic
and monotony.
What colors ooze out of you?