Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
♪ ♪
Come all you young people
and listen to me,
Never smoke cigarettes or ♪
a corpse you will be,
For once it was smart, but ♫
now it’s forlorn,
And smoking will kill you
as sure as you’re born!
♪ ♪
The cartoon was drawn by Bob Chambers, who worked for the Halifax Chronicle Herald. It is presumed the ditty was written by him also.
Judy LaMarsh Niagara Falls resident, who became the federal Minister of Health from 1963-1965.
It was quite the thrill
I must say of the muscled-out laugh to spend the day.
We were buff in our cocky youth. We had happy screams in our play.
Youthful innocence we were not gay.
Being at the monolith rock, a massive butterfly shape ’twas this dock.
Running uphill as we grasp the rope. We would lift our feet off the earth, it was quite dope.
The constant roar of the 4+ rapids was in our ear as we let go and in delight screamed as the fast water does flow.
We would submerge into silence and float for a short.
The current would pull us fast.
We would use our arms and legs to swim in quick.
And deep laughter that we were ashore.
And we were not swept into the rapids.
We cheated death once more.
We spent our summers having a fling..dreams of the invisible, you’re at the swing.
And a love of the thundering water it was our thing.
Source: Submitted by Jeffrey Forster.
Jeffrey Forster is a pen name.
The consistent
consumer light
from the Circle K
that summer.
A mirage among
the sleeping suburb.
Zombie-like
worker.
Refrigerator
hummer.
The back wall
title text
cheap soda
happiness guarantee,
like broadcasting
palm trees
on a green screen.
Back out to
the parking lot
below the
practically perfect
Circle Moon
Source: The author, 2023
Convenient Corner was first published in Echolocation, vol. 20, March 2023. Convenient Corner was inspired by the Circle K on Thorold Stone Road, Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He studied English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, he is a MFA student at the University of South Carolina, studying poetry. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Feral Poetry, White Wall Review, The Bookends Review, and Echolocation Magazine.
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See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:
• The Buildings of the Dream
• Convenient Corner
• Lake Erie
• Russell Street
Tonight (May 18) at 7pm I’ll be doing the online presentation “The Niagara Way of Death: Depictions of Death & Near Death in the Poetry of Niagara Falls” at the Niagara Poetry Guild meeting. Please join us through the link at Meetup
Death is a pervasive topic in the poetry written about Niagara Falls. In the poetry of the 19th century, the Falls themselves were seen as a metaphor for death – the approach to death, the brink between life & death, the fall into purgatory, the ascension to heaven & the covenant between the human and the divine. See how the poetry of previous times as well as today reflect those metaphors, and how the 18 categories of death at Niagara Falls is treated in the poetry of the last 250 years.
Originally presented at the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, Andrew Porteus will be sharing with us “The Niagara Way of Death: Depictions of Death and Near-Death Experiences at Niagara Falls” a 45 minute slide presentation.
Written during a recent visit to Niagara Falls, Canada
Men tell of the spell of the Rockies,
The glamour of the seven seas —
Here in my own native home-land
A wonder dwells greater than these.
…………REFRAIN:
When cherry boughs glow
And soft breezes blow,
Niagara, I love you, I do —
When silvery moonlight,
Strikes your shoulders white,
Niagara, I love you, it’s true —
Fair queen of the wild
I’ve loved since a child
God speaks in the thunder of you —
When in your wild hair
God’s rainbow you wear —
Niagara, I love you, I do.
Source: Tom Lloyd Finlayson. Songs of Niagara Frontier and Other Poems; Autographed by the Author. St. Thomas, Sutherland Press, Limited. n.d.
Judging from the locations mentioned in the poems in this pamphlet it seems that Finlayson spent his childhood in Fort Erie, Ontario.