All Because You Smiled

I asked a passing cloud, where is the
brilliant rainbow?  Where are her
colors that spill over the distant mountain
and paint the valley with vibrant joy?
And the cloud’s despondent voice replied:
“She is not to be seen.”

I inquired of the desert dwellers:
Where falls the sweet rain, the drops
that satisfy earth’s anguished thirst
and transform all that is barren into
all that is beautiful?
And all the desert dwellers sighed
in their reply:
“It is so long since we tasted such sweetness.
So long ago.”

Sister Moon, my eyes yearn to see twinkling stars
dancing through the night sky, tumbling and rolling
and streaking from universe to universe.  But the
celestial canvas is bare, untouched by creative artist
or sacred breath.
And my sister was silent, alone in the darkening night,
surrounded by the nothingness of emptiness.
She spoke not a word.

I sat by a motionless stream whose surface was
unmoved, deserted by falling droplets that, in happier times,
had created little watery rings that linked together
to form playful patterns and resilient ripples; a stream
unable to reflect lovely ribbons of purple and
yellow and red, a somber stream robbed of
laughter when the last star in the last flickering canopy
faltered and faded.

Into this nightmare of nature, a sharp sound
fell, like a stick snapping under the pressure of a
footstep.  And when I turned, there you were.
You smiled, not with exuberance, but with a
profound serenity that caused reluctant waves to
rise in the oceans, rainbows to fling themselves against
mountainsides and burst into pulsing color, stars to
push their way through resistant blankets of dense
grayness, and rain, sweet, delicious rain, to
fall in all corners of the languishing land,
droplets of life splashing into the almost death
of a desperate day.

You smiled.
All because you smiled.