Is the rainbow good enough

even though it is fenced in, tattooed,
stencilled in with metal rumination?

Is the rainbow good enough even though
the child doesn’t talk to you anymore? Even
though you fetched her from the police
station after she and her boyfriend went
on a drunken driving rhapsody.

Being the light through her howling when
the vacuum cleaner turned on, through her
basketballer mania, no sandwiches, no red
meat, her diminishing mass, the cast of
boyfriends, Nirvana, Hole, running off
with the marine stranger from a bar
in the East Village; through the freaking,
the decisions about everything,
to turn left or right.

Mommy, can you help me please?

Is the rainbow good enough,
with patterns stencilled into it now
from her bewildering greed?

You wonder who incarcerated the rainbow.
You inscribe yourself into each cell to bring
her back.

Mommy, relax. Just give me everything.

Is the rainbow good enough

See the opening, how the thread inches
around it. So hard to reach its centre,
the body ecstatic beyond. You are small,
she is vast from now on.

When mother becomes child, will the rainbow
be good enough?