An animated paintbrush dancing by
Kitchen-Window Poem for late winter, or any beige-gray day
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.