April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 3, 2013

MARGE PIERCY

The ark of consequence

The classic rainbow shows as an arc,

a bridge strung in thinning clouds,

but I have seen it flash a perfect circle,

rising and falling and rising again

through the octave of colors,

a sun shape rolling like a wheel of light.

Commonly it is a fraction of a circle,

a promise only partial, not a banal

sign of safety like a smile pin,

that rainbow cartoon affixed to vans

and baby carriages.  No, it promises

only, this world will not self-destruct.

Account the rainbow a boomerang of liquid

light, foretelling rather that what we

toss out returns in the water table;

flows from the faucet into our bones.

What we shoot up into orbit falls

to earth one night through the roof.

Think of it as a promise that what

we do continues in an arc

of consequence, flickers in our

children’s genes, collects in each

spine and liver, gleams in the apple,

coats the down of the drowning auk.

When you see the rainbow iridescence

shiver in the oil slick, smeared

on the waves of the poisoned river,

shudder for the covenant broken, for we

are given only this floating round ark

with the dead moon for company and warning.