TONES

Brown like the mahogany pews in the Rectory

my mother used to polish

as a side job when I was four,

trailing behind her with a bucket

of Pine-sol–that clean burning smell

of brown sloshing bubbles.

 

Brown like the carpet squares she

single-handedly pieced together

in our low-income house on Hwy 2,

her Cat Stevens’ filling my soul

like water as I spin and tap

in my hand-me-down corduroys.

 

Brown like the two-door Dodge Monaco

I was conceived in.

 

Brown like the side of my

daddy’s Old Style beer cans.

 

Like the hue of bruises.

 

My mother’s eyes

like chocolate…or almost

more so a brown crayon–if

you pressed hard enough

she’d see you.

 

My father’s gravestone

covered in October’s wet leaves,

the damp bark, the muddy puddles,

the brown smell of change.

 

And today, my own eyes a living sepia

staring back at me.