Carrying the Thunder by Mike Keenan

Before the roar,
there is accord,

a quiet gathering
of tributaries,
gentle streams,
forgotten springs,
consenting
to become one.

 

The current remembers
every stone it has polished,
nations that stood upon its banks,
every canoe,
and whispered promise
passed downstream.

 

Then comes the edge

as water does not resist
its becoming,
but gives fully
to gravity,
to mist,
to thunder,
to light.

 

Tour boats,
slight as drifting leaves,
venture into the white cathedral,
where millions of gallons
collapse without hesitation,
the vast curtain
hurling its breath
into the sky.

 

Mist surrounds them,
soft as cloud,
fierce as weather,
until passengers vanish
inside the river’s exhalation,
laughter and astonishment
wrapped in living vapour.

 

The air blooms
with broken rainbows,
each colour stitched
from droplets
that refuse
to disappear.

 

On each shore
a city wakes
to the pulse of visitors,
their skylines
sharing the same breath,
their nights
trading reflections
across restless water.

 

The river belongs
to neither,
yet blesses both.

 

The oldest lesson
never spoken.
It rises
from the endless plunge:

 

that strength
may wear the face
of yielding,
that beauty
is often loud enough
to shake the earth,
that the water
does not repeat itself,
yet never ceases
to be the river,

 

and those who leave
carry its thunder
long after
the mist
has dried.

---

Source: Mike Keenan, 2026

Carrying the Thunder was entered into the Niagara Falls Poetry Project’s 25th Anniversary Poetry Contest.

Mike Keenan has been published in multiple anthologies such as the Canadian Authors Association Saving Bannister, Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Writing Circle and Ottawa’s Independent Writers Association. He won the Canadian Simone Weil Foundation award for Solstice Thirst. The Canadian Authors Association of Niagara’s poetry judge Dr. A. F. Moritz selected Solstice thirst to be published in the 19th volume of The Saving Bannister.

He currently writes a column for Torstar’s three Niagara daily newspapers, The St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review, Welland Tribune and Southwestern Ontario’s The Club Magazine. For three years, Mike was published in The Lake Report Newspaper (Niagara on the Lake). He has been published in every major Canadian newspaper including The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.

Mike has been published in multiple magazines including Pulse Niagara Magazine, Anchor Magazine, Niagara Life Magazine, Buffalo Spree Magazine, and West of the City Magazine.

Mike Keenan served as an Alderman for the Town of Fort Erie (four terms)