Last summer I got an unexpected call from the Niagara CAA magazine asking if they could feature me in their “What’s Your Favourite” column, which features local people talking about the area. The digital copy arrived this morning.
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 Dead by T. W. Kriner
Photo courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
Jumpers and boaters and fame-hungry fools
end up in the gorge, in the eddies and pools,
or spattered on stone, or locked in the ice.
There’s no way to die here the sane would call nice.
Source: T. W. Kriner, 2025
T. W. Kriner is the author of Journeys to the Brink of Doom (1997), In the Mad Water (1999), Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours (2025), and The Call of Tawiskaro (2025). He lives in a Western New York swamp with his wife and two cats.
Kriner says:
About three years ago I began writing what I call four-by-four poems: four lines with four beats per line, usually with a pair of rhyming couplets. The challenge for me was to do at least one or more of the following in each poem: tell a story; paint a picture; evoke or share a memory; express a political opinion; convey my view on a particular subject; do something else while trying to get a laugh. I’ve recently posted a fair number of them at All Poetry .com, if you’d care to sample.
Niagara Gorge, 1993 by T. W. Kriner
Photo by Andrew Porteus, October 17, 2021
There was nowhere else for her to go.
She looked to the depths, fighting vertigo.
When she jumped, she took all her hopes and fears.
Her bones weren’t discovered for many long years.
Source: T.W. Kriner, 2025
This one is loosely based on the death of my friend’s child.
T. W. Kriner is the author of Journeys to the Brink of Doom (1997), In the Mad Water (1999), Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours (2025), and The Call of Tawiskaro (2025). He lives in a Western New York swamp with his wife and two cats.
Kriner says:
About three years ago I began writing what I call four-by-four poems: four lines with four beats per line, usually with a pair of rhyming couplets. The challenge for me was to do at least one or more of the following in each poem: tell a story; paint a picture; evoke or share a memory; express a political opinion; convey my view on a particular subject; do something else while trying to get a laugh. I’ve recently posted a fair number of them at All Poetry .com, if you’d care to sample.
The Late Fisherman in the Niagara Gorge by T. W. Kriner
While trying to rescue his tackle box,
he tripped into the current from his perch on the rocks.
He floundered then foundered and, just like a stone,
he went to the bottom. He died there alone.
Source: The author, 2025
T. W. Kriner is the author of Journeys to the Brink of Doom (1997), In the Mad Water (1999), Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours (2025), and The Call of Tawiskaro (2025). He lives in a Western New York swamp with his wife and two cats.
The Late Fisherman in the Niagara Gorge is loosely based on an incident witnessed by Kriner’s son’s father-in-law.
Kriner says:
About three years ago I began writing what I call four-by-four poems: four lines with four beats per line, usually with a pair of rhyming couplets. The challenge for me was to do at least one or more of the following in each poem: tell a story; paint a picture; evoke or share a memory; express a political opinion; convey my view on a particular subject; do something else while trying to get a laugh. I’ve recently posted a fair number of them at All Poetry .com, if you’d care to sample.
Niagara Falls by Consuelo Hernández (English language)
I too am a waterfall
with something stuck in my throat
the song that I saved
for the middle of my life.
There is no way out
everything tastes like a nightmare
and I cannot see clearly through so much debris…
Amongst so many fallen branches
I wish I could see farther
with no boundary to split up my happiness.
If everything is simple
why do you hide behind bubbles
that rise opaquely over
your true form, waterfall?
Or must I wait
for a steamboat to tear through
such webs woven with weariness?
We move in a dreamlike dimension
in a thick intensity we tame our fears
and we go somersaulting through debts incurred centuries ago
and now we finally settle
jumping off with you, waterfall
to the mist’s home
where no authority lurks
where there are no tickets for speeding
nor humiliation for having been born on different shores.
I’m struggling against the flower!
Source: Consuelo Hernández, 2025
See this poem in the original Spanish language version.
About Consuelo Hernández