Tag: Luna Island

Fury or Beauty by Ken Gierke

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The attached photo shows three generations (my grandfather, my father, and me), taken on Luna Island at Niagara Falls, in 1953.  I made countless visits to the falls as a child and continued to do so as an adult. Now living in Missouri, a visit to see the falls (both sides) is a part of every trip back to New York.

Understanding of both
Power and majesty
Seeds planted early
In the arms of grandparents
Held close by parents
Three generations
Photos as testament
In black and white
Niagara’s precipice, water churning
Roiling, yet beautiful
Mere feet from such splendor
This infant’s first opportunity
Witness to the glory of these falls
Repeated again and again
Through childhood and beyond
Hundreds of times, never once
Disappointed, always in awe
Even over seven decades
Often, camera in hand
Endeavoring to capture
Beauty first encountered
As an infant

Source: The author, 2026. Also published on Ken Gierke’s website 

Watch Ken Gierke perform Fury or Beauty

This is my response to Day Two (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), the prompt at NaPoWriMo.net in which we’re asked to write “your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”

Ken Gierke was born and raised in Western New York and, since moving to Missouri in 2012, has
missed Niagara Falls the most. He was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been featured
online and in numerous print anthologies. His four poetry collections from Spartan Press, Glass Awash
(1922), Heron Spirit (2024), Random Riffs (2025), and The Long Haul (2026), are available on
Amazon. More of his poetry can be found at https://rivrvlogr.com/.