a rainbow does nothing.

but you can still be weak before it: a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind.

dear little voice,

there is no reason for a rainbow. it gives the sky no advantage. these bits of broken light serve no practical purpose: they do not become great; nor do they grow. they vanish as soon as they make themselves known. the rainbow is, by all accounts and estimations, a lumped sum of mere colour losing against time.

A storm leaves a colorful mark across the Pennsylvania sky over a soybean field. Raymond Gehman

the rainbow is produced when sunlight strikes the raindrops before you at a precise angle of 42 degrees. this sunlight— or other source of light— is usually behind you. it is for this reason that the rainbow you are looking at in this moment exists only with and for you: this rainbow cannot make a home of a specific point of the sky. its brief and beautiful existence depends entirely upon where you are standing, where the sun is landing, and how you choose to orient yourself to that light. simply, the rainbow is carried within your eyes.

it is in this way that the unnecessary miracle begins:

somewhere a signal is summoned from within the sky—"now”—and light unspools in yellow threads, the air strikes chords that shiver glass, the sky full of all time bends above us, tiny droplets of water interfere, telling the sky: “be beautiful.” nobody is watching, but something wonderful is passing through, widening eyes, touching streets, shouldering away the sky. and you could see it— but you could also close your eyes and go on full of light.

and this miracle does, by way of practical action, nothing at all.

The Song of Myself, Walt Whitman.

i am beginning to feel quite affectionate toward that which is unnecessary. i have even begun to make lists of these devastating impracticalities: lists of rainbows, of the names of the small butterflies that drink crocodile tears in South African ponds, of plants called aeroplane flowers that smell of cinnamon when rubbed between the fingers, of lillies in himalayan mountains that take twelve years to flower, erupting suddenly in spontaneous shells of white and blue.

i am unafraid to admit that i am in love with these unnecessary things and allow them to devastate me daily— these not so unusual miracles that touch us briefly and make of a fraction of our day a perfect life. i place a plant by my window and in only a week find it framed in blossoms and glow. at night the Moon’s fullness is uncontainable, spilling across my bed in inimitable light. always, the wind exists everywhere at once, and although invisible can carry nightingale calls, the smell of earth, woodfire, the flash of colour snagged in a dragonfly’s wings.

my list is becoming a humble catalogue of miracles, for what else could we name them? today the sun rose at seven twenty three, and it will be nosied away by the Moon at seven twenty two. a miracle less surprising than it should be: a flower rises and opens while i sleep, though it just as well could not. miracles innumerable: an orchid comes into bloom, someone picks up an instrument for a stranger, one speaks to another with words that are strong and clear and good. a miracle in perpetuity: that the world is everywhere, all at once. a miracle suddenly: that all this unthinkable magic is thinkable. a miracle quietly: that you really can be alive in every moment, despite the inevitable. that you’ll want to take that road again, look at that flower, let your affection resume its sighing, despite the inevitable. that you’ll continue to orient yourself to the light, allow the outrageous sun to lead your eyes, despite the inevitable.

i cannot assume what the miraculous is, but i can assume that this is close.

A rainbow is reflected in Arctic icy waters in Canada's Foxe Basin. Paul Nicklen.

i have noticed, also, how my little catalogue is more that of a divine postal service; a record of each moment i have allowed my attention to become lost in the otherwise small and transitory: a pattern of migrating birds, a certain cast of light through a break in the clouds, the luminous pace of a friend’s smile after a joke, the shy emergence of an unexpected rainbow. how unlikely is it in the limited days of my brief life on a disappearing earth that i should happen to exist in this correct place, at this perfect moment, and be tempted enough by a sufficient quality of attention to see these giddying glimpses into the scale of the world at all?

in this sense, much like a rainbow, a miracle exists only in relation to where you stand.

its roots are found tangled in the base Latin word miraculum "meaning wonder"— however, it also stems in equal measure from mirari, meaning "to wonder at". over time, this became the Old French mirer and Spanish mirar— both meaning "to look at". the composition of a miracle relies as much upon the orientation of an eye as it does upon what is available for it to see.

The Rainbow. William Wordsworth

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
- Virginia Woolf,

the miraculous is not extraordinary and abtruse. it is a matter of daily and hourly existence as intimate and as casual to us as breathing:

“Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine - which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Four Rainbows over Niagara. Albert Bierstadt.

so i walk into this small world and take my allocated seat. i do not expect miracles. but i do have a list where, if i happen to find one, i might put it.

you see, i have given myself a sacred place, and now i simply offer myself the even more beautiful gift of attention to populate it.

someday, perhaps, something will happen. i may even note it down. for now, i love this little place, my spot in the grass, what is possible, what is inevitable, the reflections of light, the quiet company of friends. i am learning slowly to become, in the words of Terry Tempest Williams, “a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind.”

Winged Prism, Christian Spencer. In this photo, the sun shines through a black Jacobin hummingbird's wings: “There is no special technique,” he explains, “just diffraction of light through the wings of this special hummingbird.”

there can come a time where we realise, in a brief and startling moment, that perhaps we have travelled too quickly, too anxiously on practical grounds.

it is in these moments that our souls arrive to take us back and make us excessively available to the world.

usually, this is in the form of doing something apparently useless: of taking refuge in what is before us— the habits of sunsets; the slow, free falling of rain; the fading of light; the affection of wind — in all of these small miracles you have rushed through.

to make a list means simply to be weak before the wind. to be weak before the sun. to be vanquished by a star:

I am weak before the wind; before the sun  
I faint; I lose my strength; I am utterly vanquished by a star;  
I go to my knees, at length
Before the song of a bird; before  
The breath of spring or fall I am lost;
before these miracles
I am nothing at all.

— A. M. Klein, from “Out of the Pulver and the Polished Lens,”

so you walk into this small world and take your allocated seat. you do not expect miracles. but you do have a list where, if you happen to find one, you might put it.

and you can carry that with you. and you can look at it when you need to.

but you can also close your eyes and read it just the same.

love,

ars poetica.

---

little voice: it is my belief that Poetry is a human birthright. it is for this reason that my work will always be completely free, but it takes considerable Time and Love to give to you each week. if it has brought you something, please consider buying me a book so that I may continue to tuck Words in your pocket:

Our Town, Thornton Wilder.