Out of the Grey
I have a grey shirt, grey short pants and grey socks.
The grey school with its grey toilet blocks and grey nuns
made my mother buy them,
which was understandable, because folks like us
were supposed to only buy grey clothes, and live in grey towns
for fear of going color-blind.
If ever we had understood
that the grey faces that ruled us
were all working for the Ministry of Greyness,
we would have run.
The Queen, the B.B.C. and all our betters
felt that too much color in our lives
might lead us to seek impossible rainbows,
and so, we were taught to know our place
on the color chart of life.
At ten, mum bought me a pair of long blue jeans.
I felt like I could ride a horse, or rock and roll
as good as Elvis (he was an American who lived far away
in a world of razzle-dazzle grace).
The girl next door, without prior warning,
took off her long grey dress and put on
a red short skirt dotted with colorful butterflies.
Neither of us being grey that day,
we gravitated together dangerously.
Dad warned us not to be too flashy,
but we went to the park anyway.
As we walked in a hand-held gentleness.
We saw the flowers turn their blooms to us.
We knew then that we were in an English poem
a poem that had never been grey,
but was forced into shapeless muted tones
by those who kept all the words to that English poem
for themselves.
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