Rainbow Over the Superstitions, After Guan Lu

Rainbow Over the Superstitions, After Guan Lu

I stepped out without my ears—

only my wrong-colored eyes to meet it.

The arch fell whole above the roof-tree,

a bow no archer could have bent,

so deep a color it bruised the dark.

Behind me, Arizona burned her daily death,

vermilion and impossible.

Before me, the mountains the Spanish named

for things they feared and never found—

black rock holding up the sky like a spine.

Between them, the bridge.

In the middle distance, the child I carried

through a hard winter.

Thirty-six weeks of waiting,

then one breath too few in the spring.

I gave him the gardener’s name

so he would know how to tend

whatever grows on the other side.

The white gulls are calling across the sea.

A pale moon rises where the sun lets go.

The ships have come to carry you home.

I hear it anyway—the voice

that promised silver glass and light on water.

The rainbow did not dim for my faulty eyes.

It burned in frequencies I have no name for—

a color made for the ones who see

differently, or not at all.

Night falls on the Superstitions.

The arch holds.

And somewhere west of west,

a boy named Samwise

turns his face toward the shore

where all our broken colors

finally meet the light.