Rainbow, Crested Butte

I was driving north toward Crested Butte, Colorado,
      looking forward to photographing mountain wildflowers for a few days.
Twenty miles short of my destination, this rainbow stationed itself on my right.
“As rainbows go, it’s not very long,” I said to myself and kept driving.
Its colors grew in intensity.
“There are not enough ingredients to make that an interesting image,”
      I rationalized to myself as I kept my foot on the accelerator.
The rainbow seemed to move at my same speed,
      almost as if it were chasing me.
Eventually I stopped and allowed myself to be caught.
I wanted more in the picture as I set up my tripod beside the road,
      but this is all there was to that Colorado landscape:
            blue sky, green mound, iridescent angle of light.
So that is what registered on my film.
The slide sat in my files for three years, unseen by anyone but me.
I happened across it one day while looking for something else.
Suddenly I remembered the expression, “Nothing missing, nothing added.”
Then this image spoke to me in a way it had not before:
      “You are not missing a thing here.
            Thank you for not adding anything more.
                  This is All.”

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