Each night
the colored lights
dance in the water’s spray.
The rainbows and Niagara’s mists
make love.
Source: The author, 2001.
©2001 Larry Pace
Niagara Falls at Night by Larry Pace
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
About Melinda Nowikowski
“Melinda Nowikowski is a failed journalism major, who currently resides in Kettering, Ohio. She has been writing poetry since she was old enough to understand the concept of rhyme, which is to say approximately 25 years. Her husband, Tony Nowikowski, a web engineer, was the subject of this work.
At this time, she is employed as a part-time document preparation assistant, animal shelter volunteer and full-time cat slave. She composes poetry when it arrives in her head, as well as character fiction.
The Nowikowskis make frequent visits to Ontario, Canada — especially the wine country. The visit to Niagara Falls was the first of many pleasant trips to Niagara and other parts of southern Ontario, a family tradition that will, doubtless, continue.”
As Falls Niagara by Melinda Nowikowski
Buzzed on red wine
I watched
Niagara fall over your shoulder.
Premature showdown
In Honeymoon Town.
The first time we took our clothes off
It was to Monty Python,
Not Simply Red
Not Marvin Gaye.
“How to protect yourself
From an assailant
Carrying fresh fruit”…
For months I couldn’t bring myself
To tell you this,
When we made love that night
I heard Eric Idle ask,
“What if I’m assaulted by a
Man carrying a pointed stick?”
Nor has much changed since.
Source: The Nonelist Anthology, 2001.
Niagara Above the Cataract by Clara Jessup Moore
River of banks and woods and waters green,
With all of beauty to attract the eye,
Why leaps my heart, as past thy shores we fly?
Art thou not quiet as an infant’s dream,
Pure as its thoughts, unruffled as its brow
When circled by its mother’s arms in sleep,
While o’er it she doth still her vigils keep?
Then wherefore leaps my heart so wildly now?
Hark to that roar, deep as the thunder’s tone,
And in the distance see the sun’s last ray
Falling on clouds of never-ceasing spray.
In its wild beatings is my heart alone?
Thou glidest on to meet that battling flood,
Fearless as warrior to the field of blood!
Source: Moore, Clara Jessup. Miscellaneous Poems; Stories for Children; The Warden’s Tale; and Three Eras in a Life. 2nd ed. Porter & Coates, 1875
Note: Moore used a variety of pseudonyms. This poem has also been published under the name Mrs. C. J. Moreton
Niagara Below the Cataract by Clara Jessup Moore
Within a temple‘s towering walls I stand ̶
A temple vast; the heaven is its dome.
No corniced crag was hewn by human hand
Nor by it wrought the tracery of foam;
The inlaid floor of emerald and pearl
Heaves at the hidden organ‘s thunderous peal,
While round and up the clouds of incense curl,
Shrouding the chancel where the billows kneel.
Ah! bow your heads. It is a fitting place
For solemn thought, for deep and earnest prayer;
For here the finger of our God I trace,
Beneath, above, around me, everywhere;
He hollowed out this grand and mighty nave,
And robed his altar with the ocean wave!
Source: Moore, Clara Jessup. Miscellaneous Poems; Stories for Children; The Warden’s Tale; and Three Eras in a Life. 2nd ed. Porter & Coates, 1875
Note: Moore used a variety of pseudonyms. This poem has also been published under the name Mrs. C. J. Moreton