SKY FULL OF RAINBOWS

my beloved Wickanninish

posted for Poets United Sunday Poetry Pantry
and reposted for Poetry Jam

(thoughts while walking the dog, looking up from my worries
to see more than one rainbow in the sky - glorious!)
January 25, 2006

When you are hanging onto
the very last edge
of the edge
of the skinniest branch
and you feel your grasp

slipping,
look up!
There's a sky full of rainbows,
row upon row of them,
shining up there,
to tell you that
all will be well
all will be well
all will be exceedingly well.
God's in His heaven
in the so clear air,
and all will be
exceedingly well.

When the grayest of rain clouds
has just dumped its deluge
upon you,
and you are mopping your eyes
and wringing out your hair,
look quickly!
You just might glimpse
the shine of angel wings
hovering there,
at the very edge of
your peripheral vision,
to encourage you and I
that, on the other side
of this trauma
or sadness or challenge,
the radiant dawn
of a brand new day
lies somewhere
waiting,
just waiting
to break across your
morning sky.

When you have reached
the very limit
of what you feel you can
or should
withstand,
when the stress has
weighed you down so far,
you're not sure exactly
how you will
pull through,
go out to where the water
meets
the mountain.
See the waterfall
tumble down its slopes
for you.
Watch the eagle
lift out of the mist
into the shrouded skies.
Take a deep breath
and believe,
just like the eagle,
your spirit, too,
your spirit once more
will rise.

This Living Planet

Sproat Lake in February ~Lori Kerr photo

[Tonight a haze has covered half of the province, from the forest fires burning in Lillooet. Sunset will be a red fiery orb again, seen through the sm0ky haze. Everywhere, creatures are panting in the heat. Astoundingly, in this same province, trees are still coming down, as fast as mechanically possible, the lungs of our planet rolling out in logging trucks. The tundra is melting, the ocean is hotting up, glaciers are crashing into the sea. The Talking Heads may order a few new "studies" about What To Do; that should buy some more time. Argh.]


Mother Earth,
I hear what you're trying
to tell us.
So quietly, and with a mother's pain,
you watch as we make our foolish choices,
knowing we will do what we will do
until we come to a place of knowing
and begin to understand
the dream you wish
that we already
knew.

We take from you endlessly,
like human children from a human mother,
only rarely acknowledging
the precious gifts you give,
that we treat so heedlessly.
And what do we give back?
Your bare hillsides
weeping giant tears,
as we render plain
the proud beauty you once knew.
What is left is honesty and pain
and scars from the lances
with which we pierced you
through.

Under the crest of a wave
just breaking
a whale is diving deep, deep.
It is chasing memories of freedom
and its dive is wild and joyous
even while its soul is
aching.

The eagle's eyes pierce us through
with half-remembered truths
that we once knew;
from our half-sleep
of half-knowing
what is true,
we need only open
our weary eyes
to waken.
Mother,
the biggest truths
are always the simple ones:
we are one family
and this living planet
is our home.
I feel your pain
as you watch your children
stumbling
carelessly scattering
gifts so rare
that we wont share.
On the wind,
I hear you breathe
a mother's prayer.
It, too, is simple. Just
"Take care. Take care."