Dave Bonta's "Grayscale" is a tiny poem that works like a quick sketch. It starts with a plain color scheme, white and black, and then makes a bold claim: day has buried night "in birch paper." The image suggests a birch tree's pale bark marked with dark patches, as if brightness has covered up the dark but hasn't erased it. The title fits, since everything here sits between two extremes.
Then the poem turns oddly playful. "A Zen monk" and "Any hat" read like fragments of thought, or things the speaker notices or imagines. The monk may bring a sense of stillness and calm, while the shrug of "Any hat" lets the poem go casual, almost joking. The speaker doesn't announce a feeling directly. Instead, the mood feels quiet, observant, and a little amused, like someone watching closely and not needing to explain. The poem leaves the connections open, so readers can decide how the pieces fit together.