The whole drive home it split the swart-browed sky
like the forked veins of my forehead –
root rents, rhizomes
of light
and associations. Clouds of musings
now – why I’m reminded of rains
I wished would come
and mute
flashes of brilliance in a blue distance.
Late that afternoon we’d released
purple balloons
that rose
almost spookily towards a rainbow.
Someone said it was Lady.
A nephew asked me
questions
for which I had no responses. Can we
see rainbows up close? Is there life
after death? How
high would
they rise and where and when they might touch down?
I thought of a boy happening
upon one in
a field,
a half-deflated, wrinkled mass trailing
a lavender ribbon. Were they
up there? I asked
myself
on the drive. Were they dodging the crackling
of the atmosphere, or had they
already gone
higher,
flowering like the human idea,
which flashes even as one steers
between the lines
toward home?