Blondin Performing a Stunt on the Tightrope at Niagara Falls, 1860. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
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Source: Ryan Boggs, 2026
This poem won an Honourable Mention in the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition. It will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
Ryan Boggs is a writer and teacher living in southern Ontario
I came from another part of the world
to see Niagara as a tourist.
But Niagara does not feel unfamiliar.
It feels like something I have already known
without being able to explain where.
A child is running near the edge of sight,
not looking at the Falls for long.
He is more interested in his brother,
in the way they keep running
as if the ground belongs to them.
No one tells them to stop.
They just keep moving
as children do
when something larger is nearby
but not more important than play.
I stand there longer than I expected.
At one point, a sudden gust of wind
pushes the mist into my face.
For a second, I cannot see the Falls at all.
Only water in the air.
Only breath becoming wet.
Then it clears again,
and nothing has changed.
I lower my phone without meaning to.
I do not take the picture I was about to take.
I notice a piece of driftwood
caught in the metal of a railing,
held there as the water keeps pulling below—
a quiet struggle between structure and force
that does not end either way.
For a moment, I find myself looking
for something that looks like damage—
a pause, a weakness, a break in the rush—
but everything holds too firmly,
even in motion.
The ground hums beneath my shoes,
a low pressure I feel more than hear,
as if the earth is carrying something
too large to explain in stillness.
The water does not change
because I am watching it.
It keeps falling
as if it has been doing this
long before anyone arrived
to name it.
People take pictures
and then leave slowly.
Some look back once,
as if checking whether it is still there.
It is.
It does not move closer.
It does not move away.
Niagara does not feel like a place I am visiting.
It feels like something
that has been present in me
without asking permission.
Not a mother.
Not a symbol.
Just something steady
that lets everything else move freely
around it.
I walk back toward the parking lot,
my phone still dark in my pocket,
carrying the cold, wet weight of the air
that will eventually dry
but never leave.
Source: Kunal Sharma, 2026.
Kunal Sharma is a poet from Delhi, India. He explores memory, travel, and the emotional presence of landscapes in his writing.
James Penha and His Husband, Ferdy, Shortly After Their Wedding Ceremony, on the Maid of the Mist Boat in Front of the American Falls Image courtesy of James Penha
Listen to James Penha perform “Under the Falls”
My memories begin with the cascade
of tears at Niagara Falls as I screamed
NO when my father led us to board
the boat he said would be sailing
“under the Falls.” Under the Falls,
he said. Distinctly Under the Falls.
Not near, not close to, but under.
What three-year-old would not weep
uncontrollably, unstoppingly, until
assured there would be no boat ride
that day or the next. Seventy years
later, right after marrying his husband
at Niagara Falls City Hall, the old boy
kissed his mate on The Maid of the Mist
as it carried them crying and laughing
quite safely not quite under the Falls.
Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Bluesky: @jamespenha.bsky.social
I love to experience the wind at Chippawa
whenever the Westerly blows strong.
How it presses back the eager boughs.
How it scuffs the tops of the water crests
that so mark the dark river’s frown.
How it seeks to scour this single bridge
that spans the narrows still.
How it empties itself where the Niagara begins.
How it sweeps and then swoops and then curls…
How it harbors all my longing
when it enters the cataract’s pull.
How it soars above the majestic gorge.
How it disperses the spray of a rainbow arc
before flying headlong toward the whirlpool of fate;
there to add to the mix of the new with the old
in a breach as endless as time can permit.
How it encourages joy from where ever it dwells
to flavor one’s hope, one’s heart, and one’s dream.
How it cleanses my spirit.
How it clings to my will.
I am a Canadian poet currently living in Chippawa. Over the years my poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and periodicals beginning with the anthology ‘Canadian Poets of 1969’.
The poem ‘On the Waterfront of Toronto’ earned the Monica Ladell Award 2012 for best poem presented by the Scarborough Arts Society.
I have participated in various poetry readings and venues held in Toronto, Scarborough, Welland, St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Niagara Falls.
The Indian Heritage Council of Morristown, Tennessee, published a limited edition chapbook ‘The Pipe Maker and Other Poems’ in the millennial year 2000..
) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, 