Meditation on the Brown Color of my Eyes by Jeff Burt

I don’t even know

what burnt umber looks like

or why you’d burn an umber

to make it darker,

and my eyes are definitely

not coffee from the pot

or chocolate in a bar

nor cocoa diluted by milk,

not brown of chestnut

that’s more like a mare

than a tree’s bark,

not the cordovan of leather,

but brown, ordinary brown,

drab dark brown to be exact,

not the spectacular soft brown

of my father’s or son’s but harder,

not the marbling deep

of a painter’s brown

that looks like soil

or the seal brown

that pilots wore,

soft, rubbery, friendly,

but 1950s mahogany,

the surface of a leg

to a stiff couch or credenza

soon covered with a television

and a wide, splashy runner

to hide the plainness of the wood,

like an eyelid I am now closing.

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Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County with his wife, and works in mental health. He has contributed previously to Trouvaille Review, Heartwood, Your Daily Poem, Williwaw Journal, and Red Wolf Journal.