by Andrew Knechel

While volunteering

in a kindergarten class,

I watched a young boy

trade a purple crayon

for an orange one.

The dawn of capitalism,

of having one thing

and wanting another.

This is how people

must have looked 

at the sky and thought

of airplanes, and

how trees could have

looked at traffic lights

and decided their leaves

should be green. That

child, alone, knew

the night sky could

be more than glitter

splashed on black

construction paper and

a sun could be

more than yellow.

Even in a world

where value is measured

in purple crayons,

that child recognized

that a sunset with

shades of orange

was worth an entire

sky of purple hues.