If I look out my kitchen window at one time of day, I may see one sort of visitor. If I look out at a different time, I may see another sort altogether. What I’m sure to see, any time I look out my kitchen window, is … well, a lot of other peoples’ boring walls.
BEIGE 2024
Outside my kitchen window I see looming
the backsides of two more apartment houses,
one bland beige siding, one bland beige stucco;
above, a strip of blandest grey-beige sky.
I stare into a monochrome morning
and picture a moment of cartoon magic,
an animated paintbrush dancing by
to quicken this bland beige canvas:
On stucco, first, the quickest sketching-in
of wide bright shutters folded back,
patching bland plaster with slatted frames
in sunflower yellow, Caribbean blue;
next door, splashing the same bright shades
on each broad sill and jamb, on random
rows of siding — magenta! grass-green!
aubergine! — beige beribboned now with Carneval.
The paintbrush pauses — higher? — calls it good,
dances away. Come breeze, come sundown,
bland Above will find its colors. Nothing
is beige forever. Especially not the sky.
I always liked that cartoon paintbrush, didn’t you? It could liven up a boring landscape in no time, not to mention rolling out a road — often an escape route — in front of my favorite character’s feet. It was a treat to imagine it busy outside my kitchen window, adding some color to the urban wallscape I know best, letting the late-winter sky choose its own palette.
I wrote this poem early last year and put it away, not convinced it was done — too many syllables, trying too hard — but not sure what else to do with it at that point. I’ve visited it a couple of times since, most recently *ahem* as I was putting this post together, and I think I’ve finally got it about right. Save your drafts, friends. And don’t be precious (I know you’re not) about projects you’ve declared Finished; if they want to be finished a little more they’ll let you know, and you’ll learn things when you listen to them.
I love this—and to include “aubergine” in a poem—so lovely.
The imaginary dancing paintbrush is surely a wonderful tool. I love the way you imagine carnival colors not only on the houses but in the sky itself.
However, I think if I were faced with beige walls, I would like to bribe my painter brother to deface them with a mural. I suspect that in his younger days he was something of a guerrilla graffiti artist, but now he's gone legit and mostly programs websites, but sometimes paints murals on commission. Or I suppose I could offer his services to my neighbors.
In my college days I once defaced a concrete wall with chalk offerings to the poetry gods, writing up bastardized lines of favorite poems. I was called onto the carpet by the college officials, but the chalk washed off eventually.
It is lovely when you can return to a poem that wasn't quite working and can finally see how to tweak here... and there... and finally achieve some satisfaction that maybe you've got it right. I think you have here. It dances, full of animation.