Among Strangers

I sat for hours in concourse A,

the plane delayed, delayed again,

surrounded by a young mother 

with three hungry children and two 

elderly couples who played endless 

rounds of go fish and men in dark suits

on their cell phones and girls filming 

dances for TikTok, when I looked up 

and saw out the window a double rainbow,

ridiculously pretty against the slate sky,

and not wanting to be alone in my joy,

I touched the arm of the boy beside me 

and he leaped up and ran to the window,

and all of us stopped to point or smile

or make jokes about pots of gold.

We will never see each other again,

but for a moment, we stood together 

at the edge of delight, and the rainbows, 

they just kept getting brighter, and I thought 

it couldn’t possibly get any more lovely. 

And the boy smiled at me. And then it did. 

~ Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer

From A Hundred Falling Veils, where this lovely poet shares a new poem every day