The Rainbow \ Out Of Memory, A Dove

Alan: A vision of a place known so intimately that even now I can see every fold in the skyline, every tree on the shore.  But there was only one rainbow like this.

The Rainbow

I have never felt closer to the Perfection of Wisdom

than when I saw, not that perfect double rainbow

perfectly framing the long hill rising above the glass-blue lake,

perfectly reflected in the lake, so that the whole

formed a perfect twinned circle of breathlessly inverted color and light,

but in the memory or whatever it was that came to me just now,

seeing it again, as clean and still,

though I am hundreds of miles from any rainbow

and a million years from that particular hill and lake.

Nancy:  April's a month of firsts, of birdsongs and strawberries, of mornings at dawn in the mist, of the first fish.

Out Of Memory, A Dove

And so, April,

with her showers

more sharp than sweet

and a dove, calling

              becomes a pond,

              sunrise, fish rising

              my father cleans a fish

              I wipe the knife on the grass

And the dove calling

              drifts into woodsmoke

              a bright moment as twigs flare

              my father oils the pan

              and the doves are calling

              around the pond, at

              sunrise, April, in the rain

And so too this morning,

nearby in the rain

a dove is calling.