Wordsworth eschewed it; Byron turned blue.
Poe went darker, wouldn’t be caught dead.
Wilde said: Who needs it? Let’s paint the town red.
Browning and Pound, Ginsberg and Blake,
Plath and Milton wouldn’t make the mistake.
Frost’s woods were yellow,
Whitman’s grass green.
But a rhyme with “orange”
Will never be seen.
Read more about the winners and finalists in the CL Writing Contest here.
This article appears in Mar 16-23, 2017.