Sunbow over Ullswater

Sunbow

This picture is true, if not strictly accurate. Persistence of vision exists, and if poetic licence may permit me to extend the phenomenon to… an hour or so, this happened.

I have never before seen what I now know to be called a Sunbow, but that morning as I descended southwest into the Ullswater valley, with the sun occasionally dazzling, my attention was caught by the small fragment of rainbow, right in my eyeline. Funny place for a rainbow, thought I, not where it ought to be.

Another little fragment on the other side of the sun told that it could have been a full circle right around the sun if the weather had been just right. I’ve seen similar, rarely, around the moon, but never this display in daylight.

Of course it had dissipated before I arrived at Glencoyne bay a mere five minutes later. And it had long since gone by the time Francine, Susan and I had discussed the year, the water, the weather, swans, Susan’s complex movements of stage scenery and kilns, paddle boarders and other important matters. And had actually entered the water. But it had been there, just there, barely an hour earlier…