Dan: Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow…

Sam: When you unweave the rainbow
nothing is lost by understanding
that it is light refracted, reflected, and dispersed
by illuminated water droplets
between two particular angles;
photons hitting the photoreceptors in your eyes
that send electrical signals down the optical nerve
into the brain which in turn flips the image,
causes a cascade systemic reaction
triggering consciousness, memory, emotions;
becomes what we see
and makes us go:

Dan: “Wow! Look at that!
A rainbow!”

Pulling back the rain-shower curtain
reveals no occam's razor
of wizard-manipulated levers,
but a blank slate to be discovered,
marked, blemished, and re-found.

Sam: Science says we are here. Full stop.

Dan: Poetry says we are here. Question mark?

Sam: Science asks the questions.

Dan: And poetry marks the spot.

Sam: The spots of a leopard are called ‘rosettes’ because their shape is similar to that of a rose.

Dan: Would a leopard by any other name smell as sweet?

Sam: Sweetness is one of at least five basic tastes detected by the tongue’s taste buds. Others include sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and a balanced flavour called umami.

Dan: The taste of her perfume split the air like the sensations on your skin before a storm.

Sam: The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure for describing wind intensity based on observed sea conditions.

Dan: We learn that there is no end to a rainbow.
So perhaps we can stop chasing the pot of gold
knowing that there is no leprechaun
but an abundance of wealth
in simply enjoying it

Sam: For what it is.

Dan: The sea is a dense sediment of mangled atoms.

Sam: All of the atoms in our bodies were created in supernovae over 4.5 billion years ago.

Dan: In the beginning there was nothing, just love and stardust.

Sam: Science says that all of reality could in fact be an artificial simulation.

Dan: Poetry says none of this is real.

Sam: We learn that many rainbows exist.
Unseen by an observer
that we are surrounded by a spectrum of light
that bathes us in a glow of colours -
we don’t even know
that even in darkness
we are lit up by electromagnetism.

Dan: So we can never truly be lost.

Sam: We learn that a rainbow does not exist

Dan: At one particular location
and instead – with this knowing of angles and light –
we can become creators of nature
making our own rainbows
on a sunny day with a fine mist from a garden hose.

Sam: We learn that my rainbow
is not the same
as your rainbow.

Dan: Because we are standing in different places.

Sam: The lives we’ve led leading us to this moment of our meeting.

Dan: You, me, and these rainbows.

Sam: Understanding that we are not seeing the same thing.

Dan: But also the same thing.

Sam: And how marvellous that we can overcome

Dan: That vast space between us.

Both: And compare our colours.