III.--Victoria Falls

From above
It can resemble a huge fire
Water droplets
Rising in a misty fog
Into the sky
Why the native Africans call it
Mosi-oa-Tunya,
The smoke that thunders

As the spray elevates
Rising to 1300 feet
Moonbows sometimes appear
Decorating the evening
With an unearthly glow
Dr. Livingstone gave the falls a name
Honoring Queen Victoria
After eyeing them first in 1855
Slowly the falls move upstream
On the Zambezi
For the last 100,000 years

One mile wide
An enormous sheet of water
Descending

At Knife-Edge Bridge
The water sometimes goes up
Like rain upside-down

The six gorges below the falls
Marking other places
Where the water fell straight down
As it does now

Slowly changing evolving
Many animals also visit
Elephants, baboons
Giraffes, zebra,
Antelopes, monkeys,
Hippos, crocodiles,
Black eagles, Peregrine falcons

The Devil’s swimming pool
To get close to the edge
Without falling over

As Livingstone noted:
“No one can imagine
The beauty of the view
From anything witnessed in England.
It had never been seen before by European eyes;
But scenes so lovely
Must have been gazed upon
By angels in their flight.”