Can we talk about rainbows, please?

Just when I thought the rain would never stop, the rancid gloom of politics never lift, an iris I had never seen before and had no memory of planting, appeared beside the bird bath exuding that heart-stopping radiance for which the English language has no word (or if it does, I will rely on one of you word lovers to tell me).  Luminous, moon-struck, fiery — touched here and there with an impossibly delicate lilac fringe, and soaked in skirts of deep violet.  A poem, risen from the heavy clay soil of a winter-weary bed.

Even deepest grief must bow to this cosmic dare, and with the utmost humility I say, THANK YOU.  Thank you, to the force that has knocked me over – again – and revived me with a breath of wonder.

Iris, for the wise Greeks, was the prized messenger of Hera, queen of Olympus.  Iris was the ambassador between heaven and earth.  She traveled by rainbow (of course!), her favored pathway.  And the rainbow, as we recall from Sunday school days, was that apparition by which God communicated a restored pact with humankind after the floods obliterated an Old Testament world sickened by adults who had lost their way in too many ways to enumerate.  (No, we aren’t the first.)

Rainbow as covenant.  Iris, the giver of good news.

I lean into the possibility of messages, because I, like the Greeks, appreciate occasional signs.  In a week of much travel and many conversations, I slow down today.  The rains may have stopped, but the ambient gloom persists, and can easily take over if I don’t.  Wonders can fade to background blur.  Gifts and messages are lost in translation.

One rainbow stands out, as I review the week, among several that come to mind.  An unexpected moment in a dim, beautifully stocked bookstore on Cape Cod.  The owner and I were alone on a weekday morning.  A woman about my age, she was showing me her modest kiosk of cards.  I mentioned that I wanted to find something to give a young expectant mother who had just lost her baby – a heartbreak that has touched all of us who love her.

Quietly, at my shoulder, I heard a whisper, “I’ve been there.”

I turned, stunned and too moved to reply.  She wasn’t making a dramatic statement, or interjecting herself into my own story.  She spoke softly, more in the way of a confession than an assertion — in the way of someone almost surprised at what she hadn’t been able to stop from coming out.

We looked at one another in silence.  Something – compassion, the shared grief of women, passed between us.  Then, she nodded, and turned back to the rack, picking out a few possible choices for me – seascapes and floral scenes.

The conversation moved on to her poetry collection, banned books, the usual sorts of things that writers and bookstore people discuss when no one is overhearing.

I paid for a few cards, and a book, and was about to leave, when she reached out a soft, aged hand, and stopped me.

“There’s one more thing,” she said.  “Life moves on.  People forget.”

She paused.

“Don’t forget.  Send her a little note every year.  It matters.”

An iris in the gloom of a quiet bookstore.  A shard of wisdom from a woman I had only just met.  A lesson for a lifetime.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost, the feast of sheer wonder, when it is said that the fire of consciousness and prophetic voice descended on the followers of a crucified Jewish radical.

I am certain that if it hadn’t been fire that descended on their heads, it would have been rainbows.  Dozens of rainbows, lighting the pathway between heaven and earth, as do flowers, and children, and older women rousing life with their wisdom when we least expect it.

 

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