Tomorrow's Canvases Await
by Odin Roark

Life's psyche colors proliferate,
like number-paintings stored in mind-attic webs,
becoming dust covered pleasures of memories past,
when Ferris wheels rotated dreams,
calliope horses pole-galloped gently,
cotton candy played catch-me-if-you-can.

How easy innocence painted the future,
laid down the colors most apparent,
reds of sunset passions,
blues of ebb and tide,
yellows of cornfield mazes,
green making all the security beneath our feet
plush with summer lawn between our toes.

Puberty brought the primary hues
along with even-numbered shapes
that fell short the color containment.

Emotion boundaries bled.
Chance pushed risk.
Mustard feelings found full-up dance cards.
Purples hemorrhaged bruises of once flawless cover.
Adulthood gray becomes reality's true color.

No blacks
No whites
No rainbows.

Panicked brush strokes
evolved into palette knife slashes.
Thickness of time layered over
numbered boundaries melting away,
framed borders ceasing to be.

How inviting, this wanderlust of chance.

Little did we know,
wisdom's gift-wrapped had begun,
ever grateful of loft-stored memories,
thankful recall’s cross-thatched web's
kept captive the time-made colors,
now requiring no labels,
no prescribed societal identity.

Maturity’s flirtatious journey,
patiently mixing joyous shades of a rainbow
only we can destroy,
while tomorrow's canvases await
the buried child within to act.