Over The Rainbow

When I was a child I worried

that when the storm flung me over the rainbow

and I peered out my front door,

Oz would stay black and white.

As I promised the Munchkins aid, my scared

voice would sound hollow, and instead of dancing

they would shuffle their heels uncertainly,

scuffing the monochrome-brick-road’s mortar.

And the Lion wouldn’t find his courage,

nor the Scarecrow his brain,

and the Tin Man’s heart would never

beat again, because I was just a girl in

rubber boots filled with grey rain who

didn’t realise the city was Emerald,

because cities don’t change colour

for anxious people like me.

But now I see that if I put sandbags

in the doorways and nailed my bunk bed

to the dim threadbare carpet, when the

storm came it would rattle the windows

but leave me sleeping. Then I’d know

I do not need to divert down long roads to save

those men who are broken -

the heartless, the brainless, the weak -

because I can refuse to be blown off course

by forces that don’t ask permission. So when

the wind and rain passed over, in

the morning I would wake and

rush to school, precariously late, and as I hurried

down my parents’ black and white garden

my grey mac would graze the single

yellow bud of a small buttercup,

that would wobble in my wake

and shuck off a drop

of shiny, silver dew.