Straight up Frontenac’s Northmost side
Ever a West he sailed,
Crossing in blessed Advent tide,
Landing on great Niagara’s shore.
South he turned to a sullen roar;
His Crucifix on his heart he bore;
Never his spirit failed.
Now Glory to God, whose hand did forge
This wondrous watery road!
On ragged rim of the fearful gorge
South he toiled through brambles and moss,
Past rapids roaring like souls atoss.
He blessed himself with the sign of the Cross
At the cliff where the torrent flowed.
His little altar was quick untied;
Small waxen tapers alight,
He said the Mass of the Sanctified.
Turning South through the wintry haze,
His eyes aglow, his heart ablaze,
At Chippawa’s flow, with a song of praise,
He made his camp for the night.
Source: Ray Corry Bond. Peninsula Village: The Story of Chippawa. Chippawa: [s.n.], 1964.
It’s Niagara lost
in the 20th century, disappeared
from the cereal box, up in mist,
a canvas backdrop in one hundred thousand
dead photographs, fading from postcards,
gone to Bermuda, Disney World, flown
to Aruba, splish took a bath at Niagara
splash went to Vegas for the weekend—
but had room at the motel
for Joseph and Marilyn
and were they impressed?
There’s no record of it.
But the first human record at Niagara
before it had name–the first human at ?
who left a flint spear point, water
falling at the whirlpool then,
at old gorge, and the spear point:
dropped in fear, in awe,
in wonder at new water,
ice falling who thought of it as !
Wandering hunter, archaeologists say, who
if he were there at all, didn’t stay long,
as if he had, for months let’s say, they’d
have known—would have found the tree
against which he relieved himself,
charcoal trace on stone, where he
cooked fish—as if no Niagara rock
has been left unturned.
The most recent evidence indicates he
did stay but a brief time—only minutes—
that dizzy from spoiled fish innards
he stumbled out of the woods
toward thunder, saw falling water, stared
slack-jawed into mists and steam rising
against south gorge wall, had visions:
The wall exploding, water rushing forth
gnawing south, divers fearful things—
dropped his spear, fled empty-handed
and throwing up back among the trees
and who wouldn’t have?
What he saw: the sun rising and setting
3 million 647 thousand 445 times, ten
thousand winters and springs, trees
leafing out, hot suns, leaves coloring,
withering, dropping, snows whirling,
grass greening, fogs gathering, rains,
trees dying, toppling, new trees as slim
as spears growing thicker than his body,
salamanders mating between his gnarled toes,
mice nibbling algae from his ankles, a wolf
marking territory on his left shin
