Iguazú

Huge butterflies, swallowtails with eyespots, fluttering,
crimson and iridescent, turquoise, larger than life,
amid the tendrils and the dripping frangipani;
emerald hummingbirds like scintillating jewels,
electric moths, tiny bedazzling helicopters,
hovering upright to sip the hibiscuas flowers,
thrilling the limpid atmosphere by flying backwards;
upwardly mobile parakeets, green against azure,
a sudden, spontaneous, peripatetic school;
and the hotel cockatoo, old as Methuselah
perched on a stump like some surrealist artwork
done by a drunk, mad artist, representing Riot.

Such rainbows, even before we glimpse the waterfall.

Norman Bissett