Rainbow

By John I. Blair

I was swimming in an outdoor pool
Brimming with water, clear and cool.
Me, my wife, and another four
Were splashing along to disco music
As our instructor urged us on.
Overhead drifted misty clouds,
Part of a lingering summer shower;
And gradually in the eastern sky
A rainbow, then a pair of them
Glowed iridescent, brilliant.
And so we bobbed, the six of us,
Up to our chins in the rippling pool,
While the physics of water vapor
Transfigured the sky into a glory.
Suddenly, as I swashed my arms
Back and forth through the pool water,
Feeling its force across my skin,
I understood what it really meant
To be resident on a water world,
To be alive on a blue planet,
To be mostly water my own self,
Plump with the fluid I was floating in.
I was water; the pool was water;
The air was filled with falling water;
The sky above was radiant
With light refracted through the water.
No wonder our creation story
Says in the beginning all was water.

©2003 John I. Blair