Orange Soda Sunset

Image by ZandraArt

The sun spilled it’s orange soda
light across Kansas, marking
every blade of tallgrass
with sticky, orange brilliance
winter-orange wheat
sweeping itself across
the eyeline, implying
going and coming greens
the plains, the same
in pearly orange, raked by the sun into
a bed of orange coals
that I sprint over

before leaping to safety
between my stale and orange sheets 

these fields
are orange sidewalk chalk,
sketching hopscotch in orange
and tracing chalky, tangerine skylines
that sun
is a blinking treasure
like seeing strangers kiss in the street
or perfectly tying the laces on your orange boots, the evening trumpet blares ephemeral
belting it's orange song across
the wheat and dead and dying grass
and calls us into dancing
the sun sets over the prairie
like the ember of a cigarette,
yielding slow to it’s heavy eyes
not yet, but almost, just another star

by Ethan Mershon