If I were

I am a rainbow;
gently pressed against the
clear blue sky.
A sight, to treat his eyes,
as the grey lifts
and I break from within
the clouds, drifting in sight
after a day of endless rain.
The angels counting every droplet,
before it swims away, in a storm
or fades beneath the feet
of a million men as they walk on;
almost as if -
they know where they must go. . .

He is one, walking, as they flow,
deliberate; almost slow,
as his head lifts to a rainbow
resolutely pressed against the sky. . .
In the eyes of a child,
leaning against a metal rail
her hands reaching above the sea
of the million waves, crashing on
in their plastic suits, prisons;
I see wonder, for I become
a thing of beauty
Keats' joy, come alive
and my colours, all bands
fused, unify behind a lens which tends to focus
on all that I can be.

But can all her wonder parallel
his success?
As he creates me from a single beam of light
and I am a series,
of seven colours, light passing through
a glass prism (my prison), breaking
the wonder and fading once again
into a narrow beam of light, touched,
stained and defeated by the innocence
of those eyes, which believe
in what will never be,
I fall in through that very lens,
but those eyes,
may never see me.

I was just a rainbow
once caressed
by a brilliant blue sky