Niagara
by Laura Rutland

The river flows peacefully in places.
I’ve seen the pictures.
Green banks,
trees overhanging
the clear, smooth flow of water.

But the photo I took
was a swirling mass
just above the Falls.
My camera captured
cacophony.
The water spun against itself,
violently resisting
the thrust forward
it was bound to endure.

There is no resisting
the Falls.
The water can twirl itself
into madness.
It will still drop,
plunge
into a crisis
of foam and spray and roaring,
to flow downstream again—
the same river
traveling
in a different direction.

 

About the Poet: Laura Rutland, a transplant from North Georgia to Northwestern Pennsylvania, teaches English at Gannon University in Erie. Her poems have been published in Autumn Sky Daily and in two anthologies: Dwelling in Possibility, edited by Berwyn Moore, and Picture This Anthology, edited by Marisa Moks-Unger.