MY HEART LEAPS UP

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me die!

The child is father of the man:

And I could wish my days to be 

Bound to each by natural piety

                                   W. Wordsworth

Yesterday, the kids and I saw a rainbow.  We were driving in the car heading home, after spending more money than planned at Michaels, and I saw it first:  "Look guys, there is a rainbow." "I see it mom!!" yelled Clara from the back of that car.  "Where?" asked Sam.  "Up in the sky Sam, above that building." Sam immediately looked to the road as though that is where the sky naturally would be.  "Isn't it beautiful" sung Clara, "and it has my favourite colour, puuple."  "I don't see it."  Sam was getting frustrated.  But then we turned to the right and Sam finally had a perfect view through his window.  "I see it! [pause] But why is it broken?." It was cloudy at the time, so you couldn't see the full arc of the rainbow.  "Sa-am...it isn't broken," explained Clara giggling as though her brother just announced that he had 20 fingers.   She continued, "you know, if we could see the end of the rainbow, than we would find the pot of gold, and then it wouldn't be magical anymore."

I think Clara would of been a great poet in the Romantic tradition, like Wordsworth (one of my favourite writers). My hope is that she, nor her brothers, never takes for granted, the gift and beauty of nature and of life.