Saturday, January 21, 2017

at his feet

We've had ice. That fact is so unusual it has made the news more than one evening this January. Ice, ice, ice. Of course, it began as snow. We all rushed to our windows with gasps of joy when the first flakes began to fall. Most of us did. And we gasped with joy as the snow continued and STAYED OVERNIGHT!  
Cue a change in the background music.
There is something unnerving about coastal snow. Something not so joyous. One moment it's as airy as fairy cotton candy. And then....where ere foot or tire treads it transmogrifies into ice.
Rain usually rescues us.
Snowmen droop and lean and slump.
Lawns green up.
Roads shine wet and dark.
Children's lips tremble....
This year though, rain was busy somewhere else and couldn't come. The thermometer dipped down low and the ice held sway.
There was ice absolutely everywhere. Great chunks of it.
And that was how my grandson made his amazing discovery.
How he found something both amazing and startling frozen fast in a chunk of ice.
It caught his eye.
The colors.
The prism of light and color.
He bent, wonderingly and picked up a chunk of ice.
Inside, glinting and glowing was a piece of the rainbow.
Has anyone ever found a piece of the rainbow before?
The Boy Who Found The Rainbow.
Sounds like the title of a fairy tale.
A strange, bleak wind howled across the polar seas.
It raced along the Rockies and plunged down, down through forest and river towards the sea.
A rainbow hung glistening in the pale evening sky.
A blast of icy breath and it was frozen.
Frozen, then shattered into a million pieces. 
And one lay at his feet.
At the feet of the boy and he bent and looked, surprise alight in his eyes.

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