all of the moments you didn't notice gone in the blink of an eye

You could stand there all day if it weren't for the beating down sun this time of year. You could stand there, leaning on a railing, marveling at how water, rocks, and gravity can combine together to form such miracles. And as you stand there, you feel smaller and smaller, so small and so light that you very nearly feel that you could lose your footing and fall into the rushing gush. It would not be violent, bloody, mangling. You would just be swallowed whole, dissolve away, disappear into the enormity of it all. A mist kicks up. The sun switches its rays and a double rainbow appears. How can you be so arrested? And yet, how can you not? May you never think of this as a box to check. You silently wish you'll never find such a thing a photo op. You can't take a picture of this anyway. You can't take a picture of the feeling of the spray in your face. You can't take a picture of the crash of the falls against the rocks, or the rhythm with which the swallows tease themselves, soaring into and out of the spray as if on a dare. It's been said a million times before, no doubt, but no camera can capture this. Even your brain, your eyes have trouble.



Then a teenager spits a wad of gum into the falls and the trance is a bit jostled. And my, aren't beauty and miracles wasted on the young.