Brown Poem by Fred Babbin

If April is the cruelest month,
Then Brown’s the most prosaic color.
What is Brown?
Brown is:
“Any of a group of colors
between red and yellow of
medium to low brightness
and of moderate to low
saturation”.
In other words,
Brown is not
really brown.
It is somewhere between
red and yellow.
if you can find it.
It isn’t in the rainbow.
Iris rejected it for her reasons.

So what do we do with Brown?
As a child,
I hated it.
Since my eyes are Brown,
my Brown mother
dressed me in Brown
knickers,
shirts,
coat,
shoes.
I was Brown.
My parents were Brown.
My life was brown.
I hated Brown.

But when I grew to manhood,
My symbols of manhood
Were coffee and tobacco
Which are Brown.
So Brown has affected me.
But at this last Brown stage
of my existence,
I can poetize
on my Brown memories
with a final comfort
that is by no means final
yet.