Final "Firing" Poem

The following poem is the final piece of what I call my Firing Trilogy - My Vein of Gold mandala, The Door poem, and this, Rainbow. They were part of my healing process and were important when I had a trial against my former employer. I used them to buffer the onslaught of negativity that comes with a trial, mainly an effort to destroy me as an individual and social worker. It took years of hard work to put things in perspective and move on. You may think that by revisiting this time in my life I am going backward, but actually it feels like I am creating the base for how I became a bead artist. I truly feel that sometimes profound events have to happen in our lives to wake us up and embrace what it is we truly want.

Rainbow

On a Sunday night I saw a beautiful rainbow over the autumn foliage at Gallup Park.

The sky was black, and from a break in the clouds the sun was shining just so it hit the tops of the trees, magnifying each hue of orange, red, and magenta of the changing leaves.

I have never seen anything like it before, the black of the sky, the brilliance of the leaves.
It was truly magnificent. It was like a message was being sent:

There is beauty in life even with change and loss.
From pain can come new energy and appreciation for the things that matter.

An ending can become a beginning, a time for growth.
The loss of old dreams can be replaced with new ones.

We don't always know what the challenges in life are going to be, there's not a script we can always follow. Our lives are constantly being rewritten and revised.

Perhaps the real challenge is to grasp the rainbow when we see it.