He is a crayola crayon kid
in a black ink Bic Pen world.
What fun it was to print
the long, colored sentence,
“I HAVE TO PEE EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!”
in wonderful shades of sunflower,
darkening to canary!

His welder, bow hunter father,
caught in reds, browns, camo,
“I like to hike the woods with Daddy”,
he painted in an alphabet rainbow,
his father in the forest.
When he wrote of his Mommy,
he colored again!
“My Mother has auburn hair,
chestnut eyes,
and olive skin.
His little sister
was cotton candy pink.
“Brenna is funny and pretty!”
Whenever he wrote of himself,
he was purple.

But now,
as pre-school,
kindergarden,
primary school,
elementary school,
in brick reds and rusts,
fade away,
his crayon box no longer
in his body sized back pack,
his paragraphs have to be
in black ink script.
Spelling counts.
Syntax, correct.
I watch him try to make sense
of how to spell Luxemburg (?)
and of the two party system,
“How is that a party?
Why is a republican an elephant
and a democrat a donkey?
Is that the same as jackass?”
(I think that one comes from his Dad.)
His writing’s losing its colorful glee.
His schooling’s becoming gray drudgery.

I know that he will muddle through
in black and blue.
Most of us do.

But, if only we all
might carry on with
camo jackets,
cotton candy sisters,
chestnut eyes,
canary pee

and

Oh!
For a life in
purple!