We Still Need Rainbows

Shoshanna Beale

I know it’s such a cliche—I can see
your eyes roll at the title as you drop
my page with a sneer but I swear it’s true—
today as I walked in the rain and wind,
the cold, bitter as my emotional state,
when a pane flew off a fence with a twang
and I looked into the grey miserable sky
and saw it—a double rainbow above
clouds that looked smoothed over with a hairbrush
while people came out of their houses
to stare into the sky and slowly smile
and I thought sometimes it takes a cliché
to make life just that tiny bit better.