Once We Were a Rainbow

Look at this light—the mimosa fireworking her joy, each cartwheeling blossom perched 
in ache & flaunt, perfuming our backyard quarrels—the sad soup & droop. Look— 
scarlet veins in the garden chard, the ruby streak of the trout, beets staining my finger-tips  
             and the red-bloom of her blushed cheeks or yes, love, that heat  

in the heart of a first summer peach. Look at this marvel—orange marigolds  
in our daughter’s hair, joy rides & life vests, life vests & love fests. Do you remember? 
California poppies fluttering in droves, monarchs weightless in mid-air—all valencia  
             & mandarin. The sugar maple painted luminous 

with sunbeams. She has drawn us another rainbow. In the amber morning, yolks running down
the fork of a good mouthful. Remember? Roadside eyeful of mustard blooms, forsythia in may
wind the wind lifting the yellow petals a little, or pollen pockets holstered in the crook’d  
             knees of honeybees—miniature apex, golden & ground. See? The goldfinch sings  

in the cedar tree, crocus sprout hallelujahs through wet earth. Let’s go out—gather spring  
lettuce leaves, armfuls of green—arugula & artichoke, fresh cut mint & grass in the nose. All 
chlorophyll & four-leafed clover, all gentle woods & mythic gnome. Let’s start again.  
             All new all new all seafoam 

in the wet stones. Imagine—the two of us barefoot along the perimeter, all bachelors button  
& blue chicory, all tender wrist veins & cool shivers. A ribbon of river water winding down  
from the mountain passes, dusk & grief at our seams. Let the waters flow. The sky  
             cerulean with bird echoes. Lapis tidepools 

scattered with sea-stars & the inner-wing of purple clamshells. How about a little reverie?  
—dive bars & soaked sheets, goddesses singing nocturns in lamp-lit streets, blackberry jam
spreading over warm toast. Remember? —our midlife faces so new, all memory & mudslide,  
             plum wine & wolf howl. All of it inching  

towards what? On our darkest of days—she has drawn us another rainbow. Stained glass  
sky-lighting this ghost sky that won’t quit. Can a paper rainbow be a doorway? Before,  
when everything was possible. Before, when everything was wild, the two of us beauty bound, 
             drawn together by a dream, arched over any grit-lined strung-out busted-up town.