Coloring By Whitney Osburn

Coloring

By Whitney Osburn

The kindergarten teacher said, look, color.

Children sat there looking at her with dismay,

Waiting for more instruction and guidance

“Try to color inside the lines”. She said.

Little hands started moving all over,

Small little fingers wrapped the large markers,

Pressing the marker to the paper real hard

Colors started filling up the papers,

Like a rainbow filling up the blue sky.

Smiles filled their faces, she grew happy.

The grass is green, and grows very, very tall.

Clouds are blue and fill the sky above us.

Children think they look as fluffy as sheep.

She grew happy as joy filled their faces.

She said; use all the colors that you want.

Coloring brings kids imagination,

It creates wonders that some cannot find.

Dreams are created, imagination

Flies to a place, only we can dream of.

A small child asks, “Am I doing good”?

There is no right or wrong way to color,

Just do as you please, you cannot go wrong.

Color softly inside the black small black lines,

Any color you would like is perfectly

Fine, it is beautiful no matter what.

The image to be colored fills the page.

It is completely empty with shapes.

Just take the marker, and color them in.

The marker makes everything come to life.
A marker in the hand is a perfect end.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pencil

BY MARIANNE BORUCH

My drawing teacher said: Look, think, make a mark.

Look, I told myself.

And waited to be marked.

Clouds are white but they darken

with rain. Even a child blurs them back

to little woolies on a hillside, little

bundles without legs. Look, my teacher

would surely tell me, they’re nothing

like that. Like that: the lie. Like that: the poem.

She said: Respond to the heaviest part

of the figure first. Density is

form. That I keep hearing destiny

is not a mark of character. Like pilgrimage

once morphed to mirage in a noisy room, someone

so earnest at my ear. Then marriage slid.

Mir-aage, Mir-aage, I heard the famous poet let loose

awry into her microphone, triumphant.

The figure to be drawn —

not even half my age. She’s completely

emptied her face for this job of standing still an hour.

Look. Okay. But the little

dream in there, inside the think

that comes next. A pencil in my hand, its secret life

is charcoal, the wood already burnt,

a sacrifice.