Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
The Niagara Falls Writer’s Festival is happening this Saturday, October 19, at three of the Niagara Falls Public Library Branches. Niagara Now wrote an article about it – Niagara Falls Writer’s Festival gets help from some NOTLers. The program can be accessed through this link.
Unique…
Carved from bitter cliffs of Lika peaks
Wonderous…
Passing along the miracles of shine –
he shared flames and grew to divine
Ten fingers –
released the forces of giants
His visions and grants –
pushed the torrents to Niagara plants
Wizard…
without hats and tricks
Witchcraft…
without canes and bricks
From caves, mysterious and frightening
he gifted the world with lightening –
Shoreham tower in the skies –
a hint of miraculous wireless device
Gentleman –
making company to sleepless dawns…
With a single move and step –
seven miles along the hills and lawns…
A golden heritage to mankind –
fascinating product of prodigious mind…
Prophet of upcoming time –
deceased in obscurity, without a dime
His soul in storms and clashes –
fortune for planet from his ashes
Source: Tesla Universe
Also published in Barkan, Stanley H. & Neale, Dorothea (editors) Americana Anthology, Volume I: Bicentennial Edition: 1776-1976. Cross-Cultural Communications, 1976.
The Niagara Falls Writers’ Festival is fast approaching – it’s on October 19. It’s spread over 3 library branches, the Victoria Avenue Branch, the Stamford Centre Branch, and the Community Centre Branch. Please go to nfwritersfestival.com for more information.
Listen to scholar, journalist, and award-winning author Kathy Dobson talk about her bestselling books, With a Closed Fist: Growing Up in Canada’s Toughest Neighbourhood and Punching and Kicking: Leaving Canada’s Toughest Neighbourhood and about memoir writing
A man changed his mind at the last minute
Suicide was now out – past his limit.
A helicopter was called
And in he was hauled
And then they all went out for a timbit!
Source: The Author, 2019
An unidentified man was rescued from the brink of the Horseshoe Falls on March 19, 2003, after spending 90 minutes in the water. He was fortunate that the water level was low and his foot got stuck in a crack in the riverbed.
Listen
Hear it?
long low moan of August cicada
as lazy bee drifts amongst
purple spikes of lavender
watching summer ebb
like Fundy tides
Roar of falls drowns
this note of season passing
as they surge down cliffs
gurgling and crashing
onto rocks far below
telling stories of tumbling markets
failed military strategies
teetering autocrats, errant dictators
broken relationships
Each wavelet a moan for
something lost, gone wrong
mourning ’til that ripple hits
eddies at the base
Only at night under
beauteous coloured lights
do falls prattle of love families friendships
joys better even
than success riches and all money brings
Look for happy endings in stories told night
under multi-coloured lights
Look at nightfall for love
Source: The author, 2019
About Margaret Cole
Margaret Code is a Toronto-based poet writing since 1995. Her work has been published in Garm Lu (Shanty Table), Lichen, Best American Poets, Who’s Who in American Poetry, Vol. 4 (2013) (Something You Never Learned), Labour of Love (Chemistry), This Time Around: Coastline (Be Longing), Big Pond Rumours (A Child’s Day at the Lake), Voices (Traditional Hippie Wedding), Art Bar Team Reading Anthology (Kiss of the Blue Danube, Scarlet Tote), The Poetrain Anthology (Brochure Boasts, Poetrain of the Canadian) Memory and Loss (I Never Saw It Coming) and Chickadee (Itchy Scratchy Bumps). In 2013 she won an audience-voted Best Originals contest and in 2015 took second place in a Big Pond Rumours contest with her poem, A Child’s Day at the Lake. She has received three poet-voted Best Poem awards in the Hot Sauced Words Poetry Theme Challenge. Margaret attends a number of poetry events in Toronto, delighted in the journey on the PoeTrain from Winnipeg to Vancouver in the spring of 2015 and is active on the boards of the Art Bar Poetry Series and the Toronto Writers’ Coop.