“Take out your blue crayon, and color the sky.”
“Now take your white crayon and color the two clouds.”
Growing up, the sky was not free
from school rules. It belonged to Dick, Jane, Spot,
and  instructor Persnickety.  Columned home owners
who showed roses, orchids, and whatchacallits.
Their mullioned windows featured flower boxes
sawed, planed, and hammered by carpenters
only allowed inside if there was something needed
fixing.  Backdrops were of  approved hues.
Clouds so white, they looked like cream
that had been whipped so long it was stiff.
 
How many blue skies can a person  color?   Clouds
surrounded by lines might as well be electric
fences?  One day Nature turned the classroom
blue-black accented by the white gold of
lightning.  The windows were skinny affairs.
Every shade was pulled eighteen inches.
Lights had blown, and many a child and teacher
was forced to put on a brave face.  Mine
must have shone. The ever-changing gray
was even more beautiful than the evening dress
dusk frequently wore.  Rose, lavender, and orange
with touches of every other color imaginable --
even green --  flowered and subsided, flowered
and subsided.   No two arrangements alike!
Green in there somewhere, and I pictured
the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk getting
together with Jack Frost to create the art.
For dawn, they splashed blood orange.  Sun
lapped the juice to stains in colors that I hunted
in vain for among my Crayolas.   Rain I loved
so much sometimes brushed the sky to tabby cat.
Other days reminded me of plates that were made
to sit next to snobs' china.   (Pewter not a word
I knew).  The blue of a central  Illinois December
was not the blue of January or February.  Every
month had its own palette.  October knew blue!
Made it sing!  Her clouds were almost as white
as the ones Teacher liked.  November scrubbed
most of them away.   By December, the sky was
wool.  Made me itch.  Oyster crept in, and silver.
Thanks to Rembrandt, Matisse, Renoir, Van Gogh,
and other geniuses, my skies now look pretty much
like skies.   All different, right?   Like us!!

   (c) Phyllis Jean Green, 2009 ---- All Rights Reserved