A Rainbow

Yet, the gorgeous light
still cascades down like a waterfall,
its spectrum of hues bright, intense,
undeniable.

I was taught that a rainbow
was a promise,
a secret message
to tell us
that the Universe
will never again flood our land–
will never again cause us to drown.

Sometimes it feels like that promise
has been broken,
that we are all drowning
in hatred and fear and chaos.
It feels as if the heavens
have not heard our pleas for absolution,
for peace.

Yet, the gorgeous light
still cascades down like a waterfall,
its spectrum of hues bright, intense,
undeniable.
I wonder if we have misinterpreted its meaning.

Maybe the rainbow is a reminder to move forward,
to empathize, to unlearn bad information,
and to fill ourselves with better knowledge.
Maybe the rainbow is a reminder to never do harm
to one another with our words and our actions.
Maybe the rainbow is a reminder
to set our gaze and our focus
on light,
even as it streams
through lingering droplets of rain.


Photo by Raine Nectar on Pexels.com

This poem was inspired by Photo Challenge #319 from MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie.

I found this wonderful article about white privilege and racial microaggressions written by Lori Lakin Hutcherson. Check it out if you want to read about Hutcherson’s experiences and learn more about these issues.

Advertisement

19 thoughts on “A Rainbow”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: