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      April 18, 2012CrayolasRobert Harlan Wintroub

      Don’t fresh crayolas carry the day?
      White, red, green, blue, and black.
      A single row in the stiff orange box,
      and later, double-rowed
      brown, pink, yellow, and gray.

      Then once I proved myself mature
      the box eight rows deep
      with shades of color I never knew
      lavender, canary, silver, chartreuse,
      with squared-off points
      and paper wrappings colored to match.
      My fingers tear a piece at a time
      to extend and unsheathe more of the
      color behind.

      But it’s such a struggle to keep them straight
      once two have been removed,
      and if a bunch are out,
      no one least of all me
      can ever again order them anew.

      If they came with numbers
      I would know what to do!
      The sequence would be easy
      but who can remember
      whether the greens are to left
      or the right
      of the blues.

      Crayolas are meant to last a year
      —if one is careful—
      uses broken fragments and peels
      the paper off the last little bit
      but has anyone among us
      even the most poor
      used Crayolas up
      before demanding new?

      Haven’t we all
      done what we had to do
      to show a box deformed
      with stumpy fractured remnants
      paper covers gone
      ends rounded and cracked,
      to win a new and grander box.

      Sometimes, I dream of
      plunging my hand into that box most incredible
      Burnt Siena, Viridian,
      Cadmium Yellow, Ochre, Vermillion
      Chromium Green Oxide and Sepia,
      Phthalo Green, Prussian Orange,
      Cyanith Gray, Sepia, Terravert, and Antaverne Blue.

      Sometimes I dream
      of what I should not dream
      of alizarin crimson edging
      obsidian black silk,

      of stiff milkwood
      and soft musk brown
      of the taste of Cabernet
      the scent of French perfume.

      Perhaps the time has come
      to put the crayolas away.

      from #25 - Summer 2006