From the "In Progress" file

TWO FIELDS AWAY

Bad weather can’t keep a good woman down.
Sometimes the rowdiest elements give rise
to the most insistent need for a walk.
So I went. Decked out in rubber, with
that sweet smugness of being the only
one out in it.

Greedy wind and fat rain, then nagging
drizzle. Wind so raw it ripped
and tore away at the clouds
revealing ragged strips of sunlight, yet
no part of the landscape was less beautiful
for being so abused. Au contraire.

I walked the way I always walk—across the road,
past the pond, through the forest and out and up
and through again, then across the top edge
of the field, down the lenght of it, then home.
From that last downward stretch the trees looked
menacing in their torment, as though they were
a dark, advancing army—yet I knew how peaceful
it had just been, just beneath.

Then the rainbow touched down
and stood across the field from me, where I had
just emerged from the forest—a bright lovechild
of discordant weather.
I knew it would be gone
before I got there. I didn’t care.
I knew I was a fool operating on
illusion. I didn’t care. Sweet mercy fell down
in bright ribbons and I was going.
I crossed the weedy, wet and crotchety field,
where none browse but deer. Halfway across
and the rainbow had fled two fields further.
I didn’t care.
I went and stood there.
Nothing had changed.

But I now knew one small, new thing. The wind
cracked the clouds open like a knife
and the sun spilled. Trees still teetered
and shook. I could see the rainbow,
two fields away—
as bright as it had been up close.