Over the Rainbow
Poem - by Lisa Timpf
I
I’ve long clung fast to the story
about the rainbow bridge, and the meadow
where our furry friends of bygone years await,
but the passing of my border collie
in cold and gloomy February hit me
harder than expected and afterward, I,
having passed the threshold of sixty years
on this blue planet, could suddenly glimpse
that indistinct and distant shore that lies ahead,
knew for certain I was headed there as well
II
so easy to say, we’ll cross that bridge
when we come to it, then
push all thought from our minds
like we tend to do with unappealing
notions. Like spiders. Or death.
Or our own mortality. We try
to forget, until some loss
comes along to remind us.
III
it’s said that a cat doesn’t just purr when it’s happy,
but also when it wishes to comfort itself,
and maybe stories like the rainbow bridge
are the same thing, an expression
of our deepest yearnings, told over
and over as though repetition
might make them more real
IV
then again, maybe stories are a place
where deeper truths reside
V
not everything that is true can be
explained, and not every explanation
encompasses what’s important.
Take a rainbow, for example.
You can talk about reflection and
refraction and dispersion, but those words
don’t capture the magic.
The catch of breath at the beauty.
There’s more to life than facts. Formulas.
Objects that can be touched and seen.
So I will choose to cling to hope,
and believe in that story that tells us
they are there, in that vast and grassy
meadow, all the beloved pets
who left us too soon, eyes alert, heads
high, waiting for us to arrive
so we can cross that bridge together.
