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RAINBOWS DON’T COME EASILY  (copyright)

        -A Good Friday Lament

George G. Epp

Rainbows don’t come easily.

Mostimes a storm is wanted first

with roiling, darking clouds,

With hail and snow or sleet

Or at the very least

sharp rain.

 

Or, sinfulness of man:

A flood, a storm-tossed ocean

Drowning out a dross of

Snoring, drunken men

And laughing slatterns

Lying in some gutter east of Eden; 

A moaning wrings grief from out

The sorrowing sky.

 

Much later, then, a dove

A timid olive branch

A patch of bluest sky

That whispers hope,

And paints a rainbow there.

 

On Golgotha, a waning moon threw

Crosses rude in silhouette

Beneath an angry sky.

It’s not enough, the suffering servant said,

To leave these moaning, weeping women thus,

Tore loose an arm and with triumphant cry

Painted a pallid rainbow ‘cross the sky,

And died.

 

Rainbows never come easily:

Mostimes a storm is wanted first

with roiling, darking clouds,

with hail and snow and sleet

or at the very least

sharp rain.

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