Rainbow Mountain

A man once saw a rainbow
and thought it the most magical element,
raising praises so high

Iris popped out her tangled yellow
head and giggled at adventure,
climbed on a llama’s back and drew her cloak

about her, but the man, well he told the other men
of the mountains and they drew down
the rainbow with a powerful spell,

and fixed her into the earth forever,
their wives sang Over the Rainbow, just like Judy
Garland and wished for an Emerald City

dwelling wizard, to liberate them
from a life of llamas and cracked wash pots,
while visitors came to gawp and the snow

kept falling white, so the singing continued
of the seven bright colours sown into the mountain ...
red and yellow and pink and green ...

and on into quartz, and phyllites,
magnesium, elements the children soon learned
to tell the tourists i-capturing

the wild colours of the mountain
but their boot worship wore it down and into the ground
like muddy old brown plasticine,

so Iris the Rainbow, she wriggled and giggled
until she escaped, to soar back up into the sky and shine
on a million other adventures but as she rose, she tore

her skirts once, twice, three times and free ...
the mountain held on to the colours she wore,
fixing forever into the mountain shadow

the bright rainbow, the rainbow, the rainbow ...