(for my Amherst Writers & Artists colleagues)

A dozen writers stand on
the Canadian side, where, I’ve
heard, the best views reside,

and that turns out to be true,
the gigantic froth of Horseshoe
Falls thundering as it straddles

the border—an unbroken curtain
2,500 feet wide draining Lake Erie
into Lake Ontario. And we watch,

transfixed by all that water power,
roughly 6 million cubic feet cascading
over the falls every minute, before

finding tables outdoors where,
some distance from the edge,
the mist finds us, dotting our

pages as we write, smudging
newly inked thoughts. The
undercurrent of rumble

makes it hard to hear each
other, but we read aloud,
as we do, and, when one

of us notices a not-uncommon
phenomenon here, she calls,
Rainbow! No one rushes

the railing for photos, though
we all look up, delighted to see
droplets in the atmosphere

breaking midafternoon
sunlight into seven colors.
Not until everyone has read

do we tourist ourselves
to the railing where hundreds
of souls, many of them speaking

languages other than English,
gawk at what rightly should
be the eighth wonder of the world,

awash in rainbows, showing off
all that magnificence to
the assembled humanity—

not least a gray-haired Californian
with misty sunglasses who has
taken 65 years to get to this

place that is the epitome of
awesome, grinning her fool
face off.