We’re painting her bedroom. The little-girl pink
That she’s had on her walls ever since she was six
Has to go, we’ve been told. But it seems they don’t mix
Shades that truly reflect how fourteen-year-olds think.
There’s an ocean of blues and a wide yawn of beige:
Peach, magnolia, lavender, calicos, creams.
Way too placid and pale for her dramas and dreams;
Far too subtle and soft for this high-contrast age.
We need tones more in tune with our turbulent teen:
Let’s have Coffee Stain skirtings, the door Dark Despair;
An Apple White ceiling, one wall Gothic Nightmare,
All the others a deep shade of Whatever Green.
Slap on Intense Emotions with Angst as a base:
A tin of Wild Hormones stirred up with a stick;
Then a bucket of Drama Queen – lay it on thick –
And to finish, a top coat of Personal Space.
But she blazes with colours that they’ll never sell:
The glow of her temper, the gleam in her eye.
She’s our gold, our red sunset, the blue in our sky.
In her rainbow’s a covenant. And all will be well.
Gonecycling (again) 
Ah. daughters! I remember well. Now our daughters are both teachers, Sonja teaching fifth grade in a Catholic school in Southern Wisconsin and Mary as an English teacher at a large public high school in Green Bay, but they gave us a run for our money once upon a time, and, well,
“all will be well.”
There is, inside your daughter, that rainbows covenant that shines into the future, enlightening your live as you go forward into old age, and the truth is that covenant is more important than almost anything. O, you are a poet, Nick, a poet.
Somehow I missed this when you posted it, Nick. It’s charming. And humorous – as so often with your poems!
Just read this one Nick. So evocative and true! I have a daughter and grand-daughter. Keep writing.