Brown

Brown     is the color     of my true love’s hands
My true love is deep     rich     Earth

From her I am birthed beside millions
of brothers     sisters     kin whose names I will never know

Old English     brún     for what today ranks least
                                     favorite color of the Global North

I sing odes to marriage of red     yellow     blue
mushrooms     melanocytes     coffee beans     bark of trees

I teach my daughter how to tell the difference
between cedar and fir      two conifers with different bodies

                                        one     trunked with thin braids and wide green fingers
                                        the other     thick strips and fibonacci points

                                        all     rising up from the soft cradle of soil
                                                                        arms that will hold us all again again again

How many times can I live and fall in love
with watching life emerge     grow     give

I watch masked men hunt anyone brown
as though they have never known love

When da Vinci drew with sepia ink
extracted from the cuttlefish     did he think of the creatures

                                                 who once swam freely

The first line is inspired by Nina Simone’s rendition of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”