Painting a Promise

In honor of National Poetry Month, here is one of my favorite poems written by one of my favorite poets, Luci Shaw. This one is found in her book, Polishing the Petoskey Stone.

How to paint a promise in January
for Lauren

Here in my winter breakfast room,
the colors of rainbows are
reduced to eight solid lozenges in a
white metal tray. A child’s brush
muddies them to gray in a
glass of water. Even the light breaks down
as it pushes through the rain-streaked
windows and polishes the wooden table
imperfectly.
Green leaves always turn
brown. Summer died into the dark days
a long time ago; it is hard even to
remember what it was like, stalled
as I am in this narrow slot of time
and daylight.
Until I look down again
and see, puddling along the paper,
under a painted orange sun
primitive as the first spoked wheel,
the ribbon of color flowing out of
my grand-daughter’s memory—a new
rainbow, arc-ing wet over strokes of grass
green enough to be true.

Luci Shaw