The roar of thunder
a natural wonder
water traveling freely
through crevices of rocks
flowing, flowing, flowing
in the Niagara River.
The brink is near
foamy white
dark shades of blue
sparkles the silky water
colours floating
how powerful
the hands of nature
a breathless spectacular.
Niagara Falls. Watercolour by Maria Cotrufo
Droplets of mist
moist in the air
surrounds this admiration
how beautiful
how rare
The Falls.
Maria Cotrufo is a resident of Niagara Falls who loves poetry writing and watercolour painting. Cotrufo enjoys yoga and walks throughout scenic Niagara for a healthy lifestyle. Through out the week she works full time in the health industry.
The mushrooming sound of waters, spores, and eddies oozing up towards the fog — an insolence
that defines us.
We are mired in the gurgling of the falls.
Nothing speaks of the evening
yet we appear to be in the midst of its hyphae.
The Cover of Moga’s Sea Glass Circe, the collection from which this poem was taken
II — Granite
Rocks — granite and dark quartz, glitter in the riverbed.
Water randomly concludes harmonics of the second order:
grass plotting a poisoning
in the straits of the narrowing waterway.
III — Inside the Barrel and Across the Falls
Padded with gills,
the blowball of the water
speeds past us enmeshed in fuzzy tendrils.
A falsehood of colors reflects
the one-size-fits-all roar of the river,
its course shaping a
a finer, more irregular death of its meaning.
Source: The author, 2021. First published in Moga, Irina. Sea Glass Circe. Leaside Books, 2019
Author’s Bio:
Irina Moga is a Romanian-born Canadian poet, author of five poetry books, and a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC).
“Sea Glass Circe,” her fourth book, was selected for an official launch as part of the 2020 Toronto LitUp!, Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA).
A collection of poems written in French, “Variations sans palais,” was published with Éditions L’Harmattan (France) in 2020.
Irina’s work has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the US, such as: “Canadian Literature,” “carte-blanche,” “Cloud Lake Literary,” “PRISM International” online, and “Poetry Quarterly.”
The Europa Hotel in Downtown Niagara Falls. Photo by Cole McInerney
And the street held silence for two strangers who didn’t have to stay that way. We stood silent below lamplight in the magnetic time.
Your suburban home stood parched in the dark and didn’t know me well. Your mother stood at the northern window and pretended to be passing by. The ten o’clock fireworks stood above the hotels and were heard in a tired sky. Your roof stood parallel to that forgiving horizon.
Your car stood locking and unlocking as we collided. We stood silent across from fire station number three then went around your block again. And in that silence we don’t celebrate the ending we just end up walking other ways.
Source: The author, 2021
Russell Street was first published in The Continuist, May 10, 2020
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.
Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, 1806-1855. Portrait by Frederick Christian Lewis Sr . Courtesy Wikipedia Commons
Waters of wonder! whose dread cry, profound, ‡‡Is as the world’s voice lifted to the sky! ‡‡A wild, and terrible, and awful cry,
Fall! pealing with a more than sea-deep sound,
Thrills not the earth to thee for leagues around?— ‡‡Art thou not heard into the Eternity?— ‡‡Beyond that upper air that seems to lie
Listening above thee in bright silence bound? ‡‡On plumes of swift imagination borne,
How have I seen thee, mighty cataract! sent ‡‡As ’twere from Heaven to Earth, of strength unshorn!
How have I o’er thy scene o’erpowering bent, ‡‡Adored thy wrathful play and savage scorn, ‡‡Thou won’drous Chaos of one Element!
Source: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. Queen Berengaria’s Courtesy and Other Poems. London: J. Rickerby–J. Hatchard and Son, 1838
We live among unheard Niagaras.
The force that pushes up the meadow grass,
That swells to ampler roundness ripening fruit,
That lifts the brier rose, were it not mute,
Would thunder o’er the green earth’s sunlit tracts
More loudly than a myriad cataracts.
Source: Wetherald, A. Ethelwyn. Lyrics and Sonnets, Complete Edition. Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1931
Read about Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald on the Brock University Archives site. Wetherald lived her later years in Pelham, a few miles from Niagara Falls.
