Careless Scribbles in the Colouring Book of Life

Coloring Book

Connie Wanek

 

Each picture is heartbreakingly banal,
a kitten and a ball of yarn,
a dog and bone.
The paper is cheap, easily torn.
A coloring book's authority is derived
from its heavy black lines
as unalterable as the Ten Commandments
within which minor decisions are possible:
the dog black and white,
the kitten gray.
Under the picture we find a few words,
a caption, perhaps a narrative,
a psalm or sermon.
But nowhere do we discover
a blank page where we might justify
the careless way we scribbled
when we were tired and sad
and could bear no more.

This was really the only poem that caught my attention while looking through one of the sites given to us. I couldn't really relate to any of the other ones and to be honest, I thought most of them were irrelevant to my life. But this one is so cool, in my opinion. She tied in both the carefree ignorance of childhood and the struggles of adolescence and adulthood. She first describes the simplicity of being a child through a favourite childhood activity: colouring. And then by the end of the poem, without warning, she describes a feeling that I'm sure everyone has felt at one point in their adolescence or adulthood. What I got from it is that sometimes you come to a time in your life when you're fed up with pleasing everyone - by doing what everyone expects and wants of you. You just become fed up with life and don't want to try to stay inside the lines anymore. And I think that's okay. It's okay to stop trying sometimes and do what you need to do for you. That's why I loved this poem. I think everyone can relate to it.

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