THAT DAY THE RAINBOW DIED
(for people who prey darkly)
Was not a holy day
In the life eternal
But a cheapening
Of experience in a life,
A first supper of things unknown
Was an experience
Mainly of a drained trope
Coming bereft of faith,
Coming mainly to a dance,
Dangling in a terminal hope
Was an occasion
For an experience,
For the body and the blood,
The wine and the bread
The cigar and the gun
All passing through alembics
Was a transubstantiation
An experience of tragedy
Between your segregated god
And mine, the sacrifice, mock magic,
Severe cannibals communing
In temporary grace
That day the rainbow died.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. August
17, 2014
