Rainbows

Someone had spilled

a rainbow of jujubes

on the dun sidewalk

of this rainbow town.

The South-of-Market

rats and pigeons

had yet to scarf

them up. If they will.

Maybe they don't care

for gummy candy.

I don't like the green ones.

Do rats have color vision?

Google says

they are dichromats,

the colors of their world

are dull and faint.

So no rainbows

in rat world,

no azure skies

or rosy dawns,

they rely on

perpetually twitching

noses and the cloak

of night. So perhaps

it's not any distaste

for gummy candies,

they just wait for

the quiet after last call

and the people who share

the downtown sidewalks

have crawled inside

their tents.

Her middle name is Grace

She looks so much like her dad,

my departed youngest brother.

I see him in her face.

Mouth, nose, and eyes.

Light spray of freckles.

And when she's thinking,

his distant gaze.

He took his life.

She took his ashes

and his dog back to England.

Buried the ashes

beneath a hoary oak

in Cannock Chase.

On another visit,

the dog tried to dig them up

but it didn't bring him back.

There is one thing

that her father left her,

besides the dog, her face, and pain:

In her work

as a mental health aide,

when suicidal patients say

that friends and family

will be better off without them,

she can tell them,

No, they will not, I'm not.

And all her baby girl

will ever know of her grandpa,

are loving stories, pictures,

and an oak in Cannock Chase.