A hardened rainbow arched in sky.
It wouldn't go away;
Stuck, like a child's picture there.

The firemen tried to hose it down.
The army and the air-force and the navy tried to catch it
With guns and nets and anchors but they failed.

They failed : That night most people felt
Its grim static presence : Seven shades of greys
Lit up with light of moon and stars.

At dawn the normal spectrum shone once more,
Arriving with a preservation order, level II.
Then someone started charging for the view

But a flock of swallows came
And took it in their beaks and flew
Away and went wherever swallows go.

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Crannog, Fragmented Voices, Pennine Platform, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.