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Posts Tagged ‘rainbow’

Loving You No Matter What

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 3, 2024| 10 Comments »

                  for Dan
 

Still, this longing to help.
I want to write the impossible poem,
the one that would make what is terrible
less terrible, want to give you
something useful as a tool belt,
practical as long division, hopeful
as the grace that rises out of our losses
as surely as sunshine rises
at the end of our valley.
There was that cold March morning,
years ago, when you grabbed my hand
and pulled me toward the street
to see a rainbow of ice crystals
glowing bright in the east.
An ice rainbow! you shouted,
your joy so feral, so real it became my joy.
God, how I needed it.
That. I want to give you that.

*

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Changing Wavelengths

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2023| 10 Comments »




The day after you died,
your dad and I stood
on a sidewalk in Georgia
and everything was strange—
I barely knew I was in a body.
I was so in my body.
The muggy air was unfamiliar.
With every sob, I pulled it
into my lungs and it became me.
What I remember:
The sound of airplanes.
The sweet scent of flowering trees.
There were no cars on the road.
It had rained and the night
had not yet come and there,
in the distance, a double rainbow.
I’m a logical woman. I know
what happens when sunlight
enters raindrops in front of me
at a precise angle of forty-two degrees.
And yet.
No one could ever convince me
it wasn’t you, you who had become
more spectral than flesh,
an optical illusion that doesn’t exist
in a specific spot, but, for any who look,
they cannot help but see the real
and radiant truth of it.
To this day, I remember how
those twin rainbows stitched me
back into the world, tethered me
to wonder, to mystery; connected me
to all I cannot understand.
Even now, there are drops falling
down my face. Perhaps, if the light
were just right, one might see
inside them something beautiful.

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Not Just an Optical Illusion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 8, 2021| 7 Comments »

Just because we cannot touch a rainbow
doesn’t mean it does not exist.
And just because a rainbow is predictable—
sunlight bent in a water drop
at an angle of forty-two degrees
and separated into all its wavelengths—
doesn’t mean it is not a miracle.
 
How many times have I been unable to touch you,
and yet I am certain of love.
And hasn’t a downpour taught us
to see all our own colors,
shown us how to bend to the world
in ways startling and new.
 
And isn’t it strange, how love
keeps shifting, changing place,
moves even as we move,
all the while shining, astonishing us
with what a little light in a storm can do.
 

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One Golden Moment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

walking toward the rainbow—

shocked to arrive

in my own life

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There Shouldn’t Be Any More Poems About Rainbows, But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

double rainbow to the east—

I stand in the rain and watch

as its colors deepen—

something small inside me

grows brighter, bright enough

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Making the Unseen Seen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2017| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

Come quick, said the math teacher,

grabbing me and my daughter by the hand

and rushing us past the school’s edifice

where he pointed east at rainbow

made of ice crystals hung in the air—

an ice rainbow! he exclaimed—

and we applauded with our eyes

until all three of us ran back into the shadows

to pull others to street corner,

sharing in the thrill that we did not

arrive too early, too late,

our breath coming out in misty curls,

silent, visible prayers.

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