Out of the 'drawer', blow off the dust . . .

OK fellow Blogerators . . . Children's Books. I've just metaphorically pulled this out of a drawer and blown a lot of dust off of it. What do you think? Shall I illustrate it? Shall I send out just the text? Shall I put it back in the drawer and leave it for another fifteen years? Do you suppose there is a market for a book of poems about color? Do you suppose I will ever really send anything anywhere? What do you think?

What Color Is a Rainbow?

By
Edwina Peterson Cross


What color is a rainbow?
Is it something that you dream?
Are its iridescent colors
Always what they seem?

What color are the feelings
that paint and shine your world?
Vivid, bright sensations
Like Kaleidoscopes are whirled . . .
Making Multicolored patterns
In the thoughts you think each day
Thoughts that dress themselves in words
And come out to dance and play

Words are such rich colored things
Full of luster, flash and flare,
Do you ever wonder
What colors words would wear?

What color is love?
Is it pink and sweet
Filling all your empty spaces
To make your world complete?
Is it round and red?
Is it soft and warm?
A coat for the cold
And shelter from the storm

What color is sad?
Some say it is blue
Rain crying down the windows
When spring is over-due
Perhaps sadness is transparent
With no place left to hide
Like a worn out plastic bag
With nothing left inside

What color is joy?
A cloud of pinky peach
The fullest, roundest happiness
That you can ever reach
A peach pinky apricot
Sparkled through with gold
Almost more delight
Than your heart can hold

What color is fear?
Is it black or white?
The iceblack grip
of terror in the night
When you look straight at fear
Perhaps it is grey . . .
Sucking your strength
And your courage away

What color is dizzy?
Short of chartreuse green
When the sky and world are spinning
and you’re stuck between

What color is fun?
A lemon yellow butterfly
Cherry red balloons
Against a turquoise sky
A breath-bright day
Of china blue and winter white
With boot tracks and igloos
and a snowball fight!

What color is hate?
Red and black
With a sneering lip
And a monkey on it’s back
Red for anger
Black that is blind
With bitter eyes
And a slammed shut mind

What color is calm?
Smooth lilacblue
Soft serenity and tranquility
Of silken orchid hue
Hushed plum-colored twilights
Strung with summer quiet sound
Deep slow breath moments
When you taste the peace you’ve found

What color is silly?
I think it must be yellow
A dandelion ridiculous
Butter fellow
Giggling away
At some corny joke
That is tickling in his middle
Like a loony yellow yoke

What color is a song?
Does it change on every note?
Shrill luting crimson
From a cardinals throat
A cradle song or lullaby
In baby pink or blue
A gold and ivory symphony
It’s message old and new
A red-orange crackling fire song
For camp or Halloween
And holly covered Winter Carols
Must be red and green

What color is cold?
Icecrystal blue
Shot with silver shadows
With white shivers raining through

What color is proud?
Purple and strong
a full quiet color
with a satisfied song
When you have worked
and you have won
When you have sealed
A job well done
There is a proud purple lift
To your eyes that will show
Respect for the most
Important person you know

What color is a burp?
Burbling bubbles of pea green
Blurps of sulphur yellow . . .
Or something in between?

What color is sleep?
Is it midnight blue
With slices of a silver
Morning showing through?
Or is it pearl pink
Like the wet moon’s beams
Shimmering full
Of bright sweet dreams?
Maybe it is black
When sleep is the best
Deep velvet black
Filled with peace and rest

What color is a sneeze?
Sulphoncyanie . . . .
Ah . . . Ah . . . Azogrenadine!
Phenosafraine . . . .
Ah . . .Ah . . . Ah . . .
Ah . . . Schweinfurt green!
A sneeze must be a color
That I have never seen!

What color is a hug
As yellow as the sun
A canary yellow feeling
That can’t be felt by one
A perfect pressing moment
A wish that you must share
An armful of yellow roses
To show how much you care

What color is comfort?
Chocolate brown
A handmade quilt
Of tawny goose down
Cinnamon toast
When its cold outside
Hot cocoa and a friend
With secrets to confide

What color is excitement?
Red and Gold
The blaze orange of autumns
First blush of cold
Is excitement silverblack
Like a carnival night?
The skyblack gasp
Or a roller coaster flight!

What color is relief?
A wash of dove gray
When your heart slows to normal
And you know everything’s OK

What color is bored
a flat, stale brown
When your thinking shuts off
And your mind sits down

What color is warm?
A soft pink glow
Like that spot inside
Where kind thoughts grow
A ruby colored warmth
When pink and red blend
Like a smile that says, “I like you . . .
You are my friend.”

What color is a shout?
Orange and LOUD!
A bold, bright color
That you can hear above a crowd
Until someone says “be quiet!”
So you grab your vivid speech
Wrap it is some creamy cotton
And your whisper is peach.

What color is a yawn?
Yellow and blue
With a tired stretching scrap
of green showing through

What color is lonely
Lavendergray . . .
Like the long slow hours
Of an endless day
The world drones on
In a purple monotone
Things can be grey and empty
When you are all alone.

What color is a laugh?
A froth of yellow and pink
Like the bubbles in the joyful juice
that unicorns drink

What color is magic?
Sometimes it is gold
The flashy kind of magic
Full of “Wonders to Behold”
There is silver magic
Made of music and of star
The secret spinning of the heavens
Like silvered singing from afar
There is an Old Earth Magic
In ancient shades of brown and green
The emerald mystery of the forest
the touch of things unseen
And there is a simple magic
Stronger than any that you’ve heard
The black on white bewitchment
Of the written word
The wizardry of language
The Sweet spell of a poem
The power in the meaning
Of words . . . like “love” and “home”

What color are dreams?
Now you tell me . . .
What colors are the hopes
And the dreams that you see?

Your creative thought can paint them
In a splash of rainbow hues
Reds and yellows, browns and greens
Purples, orange and blues

There is no limit
To the colors you can be
Once that you believe you can
And you set your dreaming free

Imagination and belief
Are lights that can shine through
The prism of your dreams . . .
Then the rainbow is you!


AFTERWARD

So . . .
Did you happen to think
As you read a certain song
“She has the color of that word
Quite wrong!
Lonely can’t be purple,
I think it’s pale blue”
Or . . . “Green for dizzy
will never, never do”

Then get out your pen and paper
And write down just what is true
What color are sleep and love
and lonely to you?

Now here’s the truth about words:
They are chameleons, you see
They change their colors
As they move from you to me
The only one who really knows
The things that words can do
As their colors bloom inside
Is the one and only YOU

So, (I dare you now!) pick up that pen
And set your rainbow free
And while you are about it
Perhaps you can tell me
What color is weird?
Or Lazy? or Time?
What color is nervous?
What color is a rhyme?

I’ll bet that you thought
This rainbow game was done
Hold on to your hat!
Its only just begun!


©Edwina Peterson Cross