Sophia White ('90 / America)

Sometimes I can be zany-zony orange
Crazy as a loon, Light as Splenda
Popping here and there,
Floating in the air
Oh, so debonair
Bright orange hair.
I leap off the ceiling
Tell stupid jokes.
Slide up the walls,
Jabber nonsense.
Turn inside-outside somersaults,
Twist rightside-leftside-upside-downside
Inside-outs ide-frontside-backside
You never know what I’ll say,
Where I’ll go, What I’ll do
When I am feeling orange.

BUT -

Most of the time I am green.
The deep, rich foresty green
Of elves and oaks and moss-beds,
The solemn, sapient, throbbing green
Of fairy-kissed fiddleheads.
I withdraw like a dryad into his trunk,
Reclusive writer I become,
Creating, thinking, lost in my soliloquy,
The lamplight shining on my Muse and me
In our clandestine fernery,
As we discuss the finer points
of phantasmagoric reverie.
We jot down thought and wonder both,
And tap down fantasy all our own,
With the living green flowing free
From Mind to Hands to Paper.
I think of Hyperbole
And Synecdoche
And maybe even Haiku.
And when my Muse retires,
I curl up in midst my down,
and watch the peril, danger, strife,
victory, sorrow, joy, and life
Of others when I’m green.