The Waterfall

by Howard Wright

A pair of rainbows where it paused
and fell again. Looking up, eyes shaded,
you gained a corona while the river fled,
fast and low, over the shelf of basalt
from remnants of the plateau. Ionised
pure colours, lionised unspoilt spectrums
spanned stepping-stones and rock litter
to steep paths leading across and out
of the Amazonian gloom, the deluge
of housing already around our ankles.
When wasps hit the picnic, we beat
and battled and stamped them into the dirt.
For a short time we were in paradise.