Shades of Brown on a Dreary Winter's Day

Today was just a downright brown kind of day. Everywhere I looked it seemed all I saw were shades of brown.
I saw sienna brown and cocoa brown...rusty, dusty coppery brown; reddish-brown, ocher brown...cafe con leche brown. My world was populated by cinnamon stick trees, tawny colored fields and ginger-mahogany tinted mules feasting on amber grasses.

Tan

Brown.
   Milk-tea brown.
      Spicy-sweet masala tea brown.

Tea leaves and cardamom,
ginger and clove.

Amma steeps them in hot-hot water,
adds lots of cream and sugar.

Sweet, milky brown.
Delicate, fragrant brown.

My milk-tea brown hands
   hold a cup of spicy tan masala tea,
     to sip on a golden-brown summer afternoon.

~ Malathi Michelle Iyengar, Tan to Tamarind; Poems about the Color Brown