Category: Niagara Falls Poems

Pink Daiquiris by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews

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Spring Flowers in Front of the American Falls. Photo by Heather Rodman. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

You picked me up that morning,
Forty years ago, to take me to Niagara Falls
In your second-hand red Fiat.
I remember it was stick-shift.
On the QEW from our town
To the Falls, an excitement
I had never nor ever felt again.
By chance we dressed alike:
White shirts and jeans.
My curls. Your curls.
My ecru espadrilles
Your camel desert boots.
We were the colours of lake
And sky. Sand and stones.
Passersby smiled at us
Recognizing something
Of themselves perhaps -as in a garden.
Blooms returning year after year
Their faces, always the same.
I will remember us like that too, forever.
Our younger selves so new, blooming.
Excitedly speeding towards the Falls
Unaware of why or the implications
Of it all, our joy shimmering, fleeting.

Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews is a poet and the host & coordinator of the Oakville Literary Cafe Series. Her new collection, Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, was published in 2019. Her previous poetry publications include: Sea Glass, The Whispers of Stones, The Red Accordion, Letters from the Singularity and A Jar of Fireflies. Josie’s poetry has been shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, Descant’s Winston Collins Prize and The Canada Literary Review ’s Summer Poetry Competition, The Eden Mills Festival Literary Contest and the Henry Drummond Poetry Prize. Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ poetry has won first place in Arborealis Anthology Contest and in Big Pond Rumours Literary E-Zine.

Visit Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ web page

On the American Side by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews

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American, United Nations, and Canadian Flags on the Rainbow Bridge (Marking the International Border) with Niagara Falls in the Background. Photo by George Bailey. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

On the other side of the Falls
There is a country expanding.
Highways and cities growing south.
Outlet malls with good deals. Postcards
That burrow scenic streetscapes in memory’s summers.
Cities where catalpa trees blossom and tourists
In June, with their phone cameras capture yet another pic
With the Niagara River crashing into rocks and mist.
With their wild pink rose and orange blossom shirts
They speed star spangled in the wind on freeways
Red white and blue confederate flags waving back
A solemn salute to history, to our red and white maple leaf
Emblem too, while on the other side she remains, America!
Her name still burning
With the idealisms of democracy
Solid underpinning to some newly built wall
Red flag of something terribly gone wrong,
Hopefully soon, blowing away like smoke in the air.
When I saw her yesterday she was still there, Lady Liberty
Holding out a torch to the Atlantic.
Instead today we lower our heads to watch the sightseers
Wearing yellow raincoats in the rapids of Lady of the Mist.
What can we do there that we couldn’t do on this side of the map?
On the border bridge we stand, unaware of political entanglements.
We want to keep her flame burning.
We are poets looking at her
Like a lover looking at her.
She is the land before the cartographers
Dissected her with historical demarcations
From Canada to Mexico.
We take photos of the beauty
Of America, north and south.
We salute her.
The freedom in her.
Lady luck in New York Harbour
Beyond regressive fascisms.
With a torch of freedom forever burning.
Burning in our memories, etched in our century.

Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews is a poet and the host & coordinator of the Oakville Literary Cafe Series. Her new collection, Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, was published in 2019. Her previous poetry publications include: Sea Glass, The Whispers of Stones, The Red Accordion, Letters from the Singularity and A Jar of Fireflies. Josie’s poetry has been shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, Descant’s Winston Collins Prize and The Canada Literary Review ’s Summer Poetry Competition, The Eden Mills Festival Literary Contest and the Henry Drummond Poetry Prize. Di Sciascio-Andrews’ poetry has won first place in Arborealis Anthology Contest and in Big Pond Rumours Literary E-Zine.

Visit Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ web page

Into the Mist by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews

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Cover of Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ book “Sunrise Over Lake Ontario”

I remember hearing it before seeing it.
Feeling in the heart its’ cosmic hum.
Pulse of blood rushing to the temples.
Heavy rollercoastering roar of current.
Its’ turquoise jade body inescapably ceding
to gravity’s ominous pull.
It was that high tide inside oneself. Immensity’s
Perpetual aortic leap into the drop of the abyss.
As I look at the erasures of us in those faded
Polaroids & Kodaks, I only now realize that we
Too, amidst those endless crowds of tourists,
Were no more than drops of water falling.
H2O particles. Spritz from life’s colossal flow.
River of consciousness eternally brimming,
Cascading over the escarpment or the universe.
Niagara Falls was our refuge from tedium.
So many times we drove down from boring,
Sweltering Sundays for a change in atmosphere.
How wondrous when visitors came from overseas
Yearning to see the Honeymoon Capital of the World.
We gladly drove them down through the highways
To wine country, Clifton Hill & Lundy’s Lane.
We sat and picnicked on the grass
Where multitudes had stood before.
They say the sun was out when Annie Edson
Survived her barrell trip over God’s water slide.
They say her agents had wolfish eyes.
Just tried to make a buck out of her skill.
But they too are gone. Now they sell postcards
Of her story and her name’s in all the gift shops.
The world’s sightseers are all here taking photos
& buying souvenirs. Soon they will drive off
To be replaced tomorrow and tomorrow
After that by new faces in search of wonder,
Each one repeating, sparkling, falling
On the arched green of time’s precipice
Invisible life force calling all of our names.
Oh mighty river, my heart is in your hands.

Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews is a poet and the host & coordinator of the Oakville Literary Cafe Series. Her new collection, Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, was published in 2019. Her previous poetry publications include: Sea Glass, The Whispers of Stones, The Red Accordion, Letters from the Singularity and A Jar of Fireflies. Josie’s poetry has been shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, Descant’s Winston Collins Prize and The Canada Literary Review ’s Summer Poetry Competition, The Eden Mills Festival Literary Contest and the Henry Drummond Poetry Prize. Her poetry has won first place in Arborealis Anthology Contest and in Big Pond Rumours Literary E-Zine.

Visit Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews’ web page

Sunday Afternoon in Niagara Falls by Marilyn K. Moody

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It’s a grey february day, and we’re
just hanging out in old Niagara Falls,

in a bar next to the river, you know, you
can look out the smoke-smeared window,

and see the river across River Road, but
everyone there has seen that water all their

life, they don’t give a shit about the river or
the falls; maybe you might get a grunt or

something if you talked about Love Canal,
mainly cause everyone knows somebody

whose property values got ruined, and my
friend still points out that gash on the earth

every time we drive here to this sleazy but
not a biker bar here in her home town,

but the real purpose of coming here is
perfectly clear to us and everyone else.

We shoot pool.

The regulars at this bar know

their real purpose too, and they get to their
drinking and don’t even move, so we don’t ever

have to fight to put quarters in the table’s slot,
but we stack up the quarters for at least 10

games anyways, and then we chalk the cues
and then we rack the balls, and then WHOOSH

we break the balls, and you ain’t seen nothing
until you’ve seen the four of us playing pool

in a niagara falls bar in the middle of winter
with the whole bar wishing they were us,

and any guy who challenges our best
wishes he’d left the old bitches alone,

and we’re the main entertainment, we’re
the whole sunday afternoon show,

and we don’t ever let anybody down.

©1997 by Marilyn Moody

This Moment by Patrick T. Reardon

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Patrick T. Reardon at Niagara Falls

In lowering dark,
we drive the empty Canada streets,
Cathy and the kids and I,
looking for Niagara Falls.

We breathe in and out
together
as we round the next turn.

Source: Silver Birch Press, My Perfect Vacation Series, July 25, 2015. Click here to view the poem by Reardon on the Silver Birch Press website

Click here to visit Reardon’s website

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPH: In the background, that’s Niagara Falls which Cathy, the kids and I did find. This was in July 2000, and it was at a lookout, I’m pretty sure, on the Canadian side.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I had a hard time thinking about a “perfect” vacation. Perhaps I’m too Catholic; nothing ever seems perfect. This image/memory rose up amid my confusion. It was, maybe, a perfect moment.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick T. Reardon was 11 years old when he had his first essay published in a neighborhood paper in Chicago, and, over the next half century or so, he has been writing news articles, feature stories, essays, book reviews and poems, often for money. He has published five books and is midway through the writing of a sixth.