Impressions of a Rainbow that Never Showed  

Into every life a little rain must fall…
There’s no rainbow without the rain…

                                                                     I
It seemed, our storm now blown over, as though there soon could be some rainbow
Seen through that cloud-clad screen, windows those winds were slowly opening now…
Too slowly, though, for me to see show there- form at half past that holy hour of three
(Or wholly half before four)- hovering over our town… too slowly for an outbound-crowd
To see that scene, so serene, soon unfolding; seven beams set evenly as three-and-three,
Each trio a riot of color (or it otherwise is the while in white disguise), bordering on a green
Even emerald, Gemini’s gem- mine; so are those soaring colors ordered rose-red to orchid,
Florid as Flora’s auras, or as seven petals set on a stem, or set as several stones in metals
Precisely as precious, stone and setting, as any I admired met with in me, mined in my mind
(My bow’s combos, beam and seam, some summing-up of Beauty in one overarching scheme).
And all to crown my own two brown eyes, both cone and dome: also, your chrome-color one,
That open-as-crows-fly sky’s-dome over your own, I almost said our again (your, I now know,
Is not, as it once was, the same as me or our), hometown one Sunday summer afternoon…

                                                                    II
Even when alone in this house, as in this evening now, I know its so-sodden-sown,
Sudden as some summer shower’s coming on (those summer showers showing
As wind-blown gowns in their soon-as-coming-down-gone) by an odd shadow,
A gold-flowering glow- and so shows that bow on sky’s brow, seen for miles around
(Our eyes on the horizon, we know how rays erase, set far faster than they’ve arisen).
Summoned by that halo I know as well as my own shadow, I move to my window
And smile at that miles’-long frown towering over my, or however many more towns
On-down-the-line; not as though I’m a misanthrope happier at others looking down
(One in misery loving any company, one being then even as many as seven friends),
But just to beam at that form from heaven bowing down even to one as lowly as me.

                                                                 III
I now owed it, so I supposed, to the hoping-to-be poet in me (some poem as sure
As the sunrise to come to me the moment I sat down, in high hopes, to compose it)
To linger longer for our storm, that swarm of cloud cover cold or warm, to blow over:
Wait for weightless rays (or, say, airy trails far fairer than dancing fairies’ trains,
Rays arrayed as fairy hair, no strand straying or played with with wind’s hand),
In radiance lighter than traces of ladies’ paces, or their faces’ laughter after
The rain; in aura brighter, from a human-angle glance, than an angel’s halo,
Or any stain glass saint set in Saint Teresa’s windows- to show after the rain.

                                                                 IV
I wondered what one might say of some bright bow that flows and floats better,
Though motionless in both bow and stern, than any boat upon an open ocean…
I weighed what wit may say of a weightlessness of such gravity, what paint to apply
(While not tainting that high lady’s face in the guise of a low guy’s white-as-lilies lies)
To convey a mist-dressed mistress come as comely as a blushing debutante but ending-
Suddenly- some nun in a convent; she promiscuous to us as Venus, chased by our eyes,
But promises she was as chaste as an Artemis in ice is, thus cheats these eyes of a lust
She, slut-like, gave rise to; stuns us then shuns us as much as if she shuts out our sight…
What may I say of seven resistless, virgin sisters, auroras our pleading eyes lust for far more
Than Orion did for that cluster of ladies lustrous as stars, these Pleiades or those Oceanids?
What breath can lungs give to a high-as-the-skies-flung flag ever-flat with no flap,
And is whether the weather’s windy or not without being windy as Zephyrus myself?

                                                                V
Whose mouth, almost panting in passion, does more than passing truth to myths
Fashioned from those hues; whose brain can canvas and frame huge Nature’s
Most famous painting, one far fairer in air than any hung in The Met’s collection?
Who describe that luminescent crescent, spectrum lovelier than any upon a stem?
This flame, whose every ray- red, amber, yellow, and our four cooler, bluer colors-
Who may, who stares in tears at Nature so set in tiers, frame it as a mere stairway
Carrying our eyes, crying or dry, to a beauty higher or brighter than their way there?
Some eyes see seven- or fourteen even- silken slivers set against a backdrop of silver;
Other persons (more Occidental), a mere typical, optical phenomenon, all chemical-
Electrical through two globes to one lobe (occipital): reflection, refraction, dispersion
Of tons of ultra-light photons in drops of water (each still a world, entire-in-miniature?),
Mist and myth, red to purple, best bled of color and word… mystery or story not at least
Better answered with the methods of math, and the form, first and last, only a formula?
Nature’s natives may say it’s a painted serpent, and Christians, God’s loving covenant,
A promise to never again send us rain for forty days, knowing we’re but dust-made-mud.

                                                             VI
I only hoped the train came minutes late that day that I might stay and wait;
I’d sprint from the station to Saint Teresa’s on Summit’s summit, the best place,
East or west, should tears or rays (as auras) in skies or eyes arise, to seat myself
To await my in-prism-print princess- not miss a blessing heaven promised me
To imprison myself in being punctual to someone else’s colorless schedule
(That lack-of-color time-track table/scheme white, green, black facts between).
From the crowd I hurried fast as one could whose head was lost in the clouds,
Held up my head as I went west while looking east (as it is in the Scriptures),
One by Beauty summoned to some mound to see for myself (and for pictures)
The sure-to-come spectrum to one who knew, in all faith, that it was fated to,
My eyes awaiting dyes I’d only be lightly lying if I said they were worth dying for.

                                                             VII
All this is to say (described in rather roundabout, romantic ways) the rays
I sought out that day that ought, so I thought, after such sun and shower,
To have shone never showed that hour; my pilgrimage to see a girl’s image
In a grin soon turned grim, she showing nowhere within my sky’s ring or rim…
I, in missing my miss, was left like one ready for wedded bliss, to see his Iris,
This bride and bridge of his shining from behind a misty veil in her shrine (virgin
Views of new wives will pale to those seven hues), and ready to lift her left hand
And bestow on her fourth finger a ring… I was left alone as anyone at an altar
And felt my sacrifice was wasted as I saw others went their way west-to-east,
All aboard a road broad and flat as that that’s traveled by tracks, and forward
As straight as two swords towards two words, to broads who attract us as Fate.

                                                             VIII
The others had abandoned standing on the platform (no delay that day, sadly,
The train line running on time- for once too true to its numbers and table,
And with zero care for one) while I stayed behind waiting for a fairy fabric that,
If it came, would’ve seemed fairly as magic as any existing in tale or fable.
Not long after it whistled away (whisked away as a horse that fled the stable,
Or fast as lady-turned-whore), when I was caught between church and station,
Came the four o’clock ring of bells and then fell the rain heavily as hail again.
(Maybe I was a fool, too aloof to follow the well-known flow, always gazing
Wrong ways for those hues whose flowering forth is not north nor south…
Maybe my two eyes, or the other I who saw, was too one-directional, as one
Way too partial to the theory of a particle, so always parting ways with waves).

                                                           IX
I didn’t shelter from what the heavens sent me, not beyond a head bent
To look on a tar far blacker then than any night neither moonlit nor starry,
Blacker for its own lack while backed by a far-darker, mine-deep dark in me.
Though sorry, I didn’t tarry there but soon drank a draft of cooling comfort,
For the sweltering day was made a degree less painful while I made my way
Beneath the wind-swept, pewter skies that wept for me (or so I saw a sign,
My name and initial, I mean, in that color), and my misery loves sympathy.
No maiden came arrayed in seven rays, no dame made as my May’s-mate
(My birth month, but my story’s no starry mystery, no page made by pagan Fate),
And if, in lieu of ribbons or a bow, I saw it was (at present) a knot, it was not so…

                                                            X
There is an Untier of Knots, a Uniter of endless loose ends who Heaven
Sends us, whose promises eyes can’t miss if we but our heads bow or lift,
Either or both (forge an angel-heart and forget angle-to-earth), with the Yes
That made her The Mother Blessed; I offer for her my I as she vowed, for me,
Hers, my vowel of love making selfless the self, ties the knot that never severs.
When every face I felt fated to stay fades, and I need some sum of all (my) ladies
(The one who left, ever-gone even as Eden is, whose leaving left me my maladies),
A seven to Eve’s six, there’s one who, by comparison, robs all our orbs, all but one Son,
Of glory- for in her orisons so holy, she, like the moon, from Him absorbs all illumination…
A made-for-me Maiden to amaze me more than any, a May’s Dame made as rays of the sun;
Only my Mary, Heaven’s army’s queen, Son-raised, and whose sun’s light over every life reigns.

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