The Classification of Rainbows

we’ve got ones with red and orange,
no blues and greens, just blues and greens,
in between each other and refractive,
double, and double non-standard,
the height of the sun is your factor
the width of the beads of water
the density and proximity
the angle of the light, the time
of the day, the weather, and hour,
the frost before, the temperature,
the relative humidity, what it feels like
what it should feel like, and differential –

true fact:
if you stand near your friend
who is standing near you
and in that same nanosecond
in that spaciousness of atoms
you will not see the exact likeness
there will be green and blue and
colors missing, your eyes both
unique as the vision of prism itself

you will laugh and share the time
without the magic being equal,
and yet that is the magic.
What is difference; what is same.

Penney Knightly is a survivor of sexual abuse; themes about that are often found in her work. Her poetry has appeared in BROAD Magazine, Big River Poetry Review, Dead King Magazine, Ink In Thirds, and elsewhere. She lives with her family on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay, where she writes and makes art. She tweets @penneyknightly and shares on her blog: http://penneyknightly.com.