Author: Andrew Porteus

Andrew Porteus is a retired librarian who started the Niagara Falls Poetry Project in 1998 in order to gather in one place the hundreds of poems that exist about Niagara Falls. Andrew returned to Brock University to get a Master of Art degree based on the website

The Niagara Falls by Narenderpal Singh

singh
Part of the Canadian Falls and the American Falls seen through the mist
Photo by Andrew Porteus

When I first saw it
I was wonderstruck.
Yes, what a wonder—
wonder on earth.

When I saw the Niagara Falls again
I was wonderstruck, true,
but pensive—
where does it flow from
where does it go
how much
how big
how long shall it last—
and a thousand questions
which have no answer.

When I saw it again and again
I was prayer itself.
No questions
nor answers
a sense of just being nought
a zero—
like man
in His creation.

Today I see you
my friend
like Niagara Falls
as I saw it last.
Words, wonders,
thoughts, ideas,
earthly profundity
godly truths
godly secrets
flow out of your mind
your lips!

Vast expanses
countless Milky Ways
universe after universe
shapes itself and vanishes—
you, dear friend,
are the Niagara Falls.

Source:  Dubey, Bijay Kant.  The Niagara Falls by Narenderpal Singh. ResearchGate, January 2024.

First published in Singh’s Crossroads.

Read Dubey’s essay about The Niagara Falls by Narenderpal Singh.

 

 

Niagara Falls by Nolan Natasha

I was driving, you took over the stereo. That Lucinda song
I’d never heard. Lodestar too. We ate bad pizza.
You beat me at Skee-ball. We must have looked at the falls—
I remember how nervous you were at the blackjack table.
How I learned you are afraid of heights, handsome
in any T-shirt. How I dared you to charm the girl
at the prize counter, just so I could watch you—
I held your hand,  wanted to take your arm.
 
It’s almost impossible to imagine you then,
in that tacky motel,
not yet my partner, no longer my friend, so newly
my lover. The roar of the water— even when you don’t hear it,
it pours and pours, erasing the rock underneath.
nolan
Nolan Natasha and the cover of their book
I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?


Niagara Falls by Nolan Natasha was published in their book I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me (Invisible Publishing, 2019) and the performed version is the second episode of I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?  YouTube channel. On this channel Nolan creates videos inspired by poems and short narratives.

 

From their website:

I am a queer and trans writer, performer, and filmmaker. 

Of Faroese and English ancestry, I am a settler living on unceded Mi’Kmaw territory in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Canada. I have been a finalist for the CBC poetry prize, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry prize, the Geist postcard contest, and was the runner-up for the Thomas Morton fiction prize. My debut poetry collection, I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? was released in the fall of 2019 with Invisible Publishing. I am currently working on a collection of short stories and a series of video poems.

 

Niagara by Timothy

timothy
Two ladies posing in front of a Niagara Falls backdrop, one with an umbrella. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

There’s nothing (saving six,) great blustering Fall,
Thou may’st not to the fancy’s sense recall,
A drove of bleating, wooly-coated sheep,
Each other chasing in a headlong leap ;
The flaunting flounces of a dancing rout :
A cask of whiskey with the head knocked out ;
A stormy fury, jealous of her spouse,
Smashing the total crockery of the house ;
The frothy bombast of some learned dunce ;
Ten thousand bawling children whipt at once ;
A city’s soap-suds on a washing  day,
Or rowdy hubbubs of a drunken fray ;
     The present times, so meatless—’ out of joint,’
Or breakfast cascades, off rough Judith’s point,

Oh may the spray that flusters o’er thy water,
Making a fuss much greater than it oughter,
There spend its rage, nor shower upon the hills,
To wet those natives who’ve no umberills !

Source: Geneva Courier, August 16, 1842

At head of poem: “Our Tim has left at the Falls the following.”  This note and the tone of the poem suggests that Timothy may have written this poem in the Table Rock Album, kept at Table Rock House in Niagara Falls, Ontario. There is no other information identifying Timothy.

Click here to see other poems in the Table Rock Album.

Also published in The Ovid Bee, August 10, 1842

Kayaker Takes Plunge at Niagara by E. R. Baxter III

kayak
Jesse W. Sharp Going Over Niagara Falls in His Kayak. June 5, 1990. Photographer unknown.
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Down through
The rapids above the falls he
comes floating, kayak like a blunt
arrow, a twig, a hollow stick, him waist-
up from the center paddling, the white noise
of falling water thrashing the air. People
running along the shore as if in a dream,
arms waving, tiny mouths shouting
without sound. He imagines cameras
pointing, himself on millions of television
screens around the world—gets hung up
on rocks, lifts himself heart thudding
awkwardly out, has legs again, pulls
the kayak clear, settles into it, shoots
forward toward the lip, paddle digging
water jumping to bare arms and chest, imagining
himself sailing clear, beyond the rocks, down,
down, triumphant—lifts the paddle
over his head, whirling it in salute
as he hits the edge, thinks
I’m going to make it! sees
the open maw of the gorge, mist, sunlight
on the far side, sees he’s not sailing clear
realizes the weight of bad judgement
the error of imagination, tons
of water, heavier than shame.

Source: E. R. Baxter III. Niagara Lost and Found: New and Selected Poems.  Yarmouthport, MA: Abyss Publications, 2013.

Read about Jesse Sharp, who went over Niagara Falls in his kayak on June 5, 1990.

Read about E.R. Baxter III

Niagara Falls by Alexander Duringer

 

duringer
Joseph Avery Stranded in the Niagara River
Photo by Platt Babbitt, July 19, 1853. Image courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library (NY)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source:  Niagara Falls by Alexander Duringer was originally published in Passengers Journal, volume 3, issue 1

Alexander Duringer is a reformed English teacher from Western New York currently living in Raleigh, NC where he studies as an MFA candidate at North Carolina State University with a concentration in poetry. He received his Masters in English Education from SUNY Buffalo in 2015. He is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize and received an Honorable Mention for the Dorianne Laux Prize for Poetry.  In addition to this poem in Passengers Review, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The South Dakota Review, &Change, Plainsongs, Cola Literary Review, The Shore, and Poets.org among others.