Ryan Jessup

The Search for Gold

at first as always when I see a rainbow forming gracefully in the sky layer upon layer in amazement of how it happens I still want to follow it all the way and I remember in my youth seeing it there beyond the ridge of a neighbor’s farm at my grandmother’s house and how I attempted to chase it to the end when I walked through thick woods and brush and an empty pasture believing all that time that I would reach the end and there would be something valuable or magical to behold like a pot of gold as people say and of course there was no end and no gold it was all an illusion and ultimately a disappointment but as I stand here in my green grass late in the summer light with my wife and son at my side as we watch the colors in full bloom coming down over the purple black clouds above us I look at their faces and I put my arms around them and embrace them for the gold that they are to me

after weeks of rain
small windows of sunlight
blossom through the trees