Tag: Niagara Falls

Leaping by Donna-Lee Smith

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

The first time it happened was on a family holiday when the parents piled the four of us into the back seat of our wood-panelled Plymouth station wagon, circa 1959.

Dan 10
moi  9
Deb  5
Dave 4

I hear ya, the 4 Ds, what were they thinking?

We piled in, we were piled on, we were on a camping trip from Ottawa to see the falls, the mythical falls!
 
A long day journey with moi pleading car sickness so I could sit up front and not stay squished in the back with the squabblers.  I know, you’re wondering how can 4 kids be packed into the back seat of a station wagon: no problem: this trip was 20 years prior to that belt legislation. Plus, we had Heidi with us, a usually sweet dachshund, but cranky car companion. What were they thinking?
 
Am writing this in the throes of slouching towards 75, can’t remember anything much about the actual road trip. But we must’ve played horses and cemeteries. You get points for horses you see in the fields and you lose all your points if someone yells ‘cemetery’. This requires lots of I saw it first. 
 
But I do remember the awestruckness of seeing the falls, feeling the mist, the magnetism of the cataract, the thunderous roar, the trembling…and the irresistible desire, more the irresistible need, to leap. To be one with the shoots, the flumes, the brume….
 
Even today, with small cascades, like Hogsback Falls on the Rideau River in Ottawa, I want to leap. 
 
Anyone out there feel the same tug?
 
Perhaps Annie Edson Taylor did when she first saw Niagara Falls. To design and build a barrel, at age 63, and throw herself into the river and over the falls! We’re talking a drop of 160 feet, a flow rate of 85,000 cubic feet per second! Though she was the first person to survive this remarkable feat, she was not the risk taker you might take her for: she sent her cat over the precipice a few days earlier, and he survived.
 
You? Would you go over Niagara Falls for fame and fortune? 

This prose-poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.
donna-lee
Donna-Lee Smith and friend
 
 
Donna-Lee Smith writes mostly from Montreal, but also from an off-the-grid cabin in the Laurentian hills north of the city, where bears raid the blueberries and wolves commune with the moon. At other times she writes from Gotland Island (Baltic Sea) where her grandchildren also eat blueberries and commune in Swedish.
 
She has a hankering to leap.

An Item on my Old Bucket List by Rose Mary Boehm

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art


Niagara—some say the name is a bastardised form of the Iroquois “Onguiaahra.” They say it means “The Strait.” Now “Niagara” has become associated with a thunderous image. That I can feel.
 
I only ever imagined its deafening voice,
its power, its white foam, its cold spray,
imagined myself in a slicker with a hood–
preferably blue (or red)–
on a boat, getting nearer, nearer, nearer,
before we are being sucked into unimaginable
depths, Charybdis and Scylla,
my fellow passengers quiet
in the face of such a relentless force.
 
When I close my eyes
I see dark clouds pulling up,
attracted like magnets to a cauldron
of deep water, angry foam, killer rocks.
The door to Hades.
Who will pay the ferryman?

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

boehm
Rose Mary Boehm


Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022), WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Cyberwit July 2022), and SAUDADE (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, LIFE STUFF, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Read about the origins, pronunciation, and variants of the Word Niagara

Hearing the World Differently by Kate Young

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

The gallery lies in silence.
Clusters of faces pause
canvas to canvas
lips miming words,
the unheard musings of the many.
 
I inhale their movement,
jackets and backpacks jostle
the canvas to my right
the vertical drop of Niagara Falls
drawing us into its power.
 
The tide turns.
My eyes conjure sounds
only I can hear,
decibels of cyan and teal
the roar of acrylic licking the frame.
 
I taste the grit of salt on teeth,
sea-spray fresh on my face.
Violet tones colour my mood,
the distinctive tang of oil on wood.
I open my senses, hear it all.

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

kate-young
Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and Chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in May 2024. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.

Nik Wallenda Walks a Wire Across Niagara Falls by Diana Cole

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

 

Into a theatre of wind and mist 
            a cable dips, disappears. 
 
He moves steadily, 
            each step shortening
                        the improbable.
                                    He dissolves into thunder.
 
The camera loses      then finds his face 
            soaked, focused 
                        on distance relenting.
 
In shoes his mother made 
            elk-skin suede
                        his feet curl along the wire. 
 
He tells the cameraman 
            his arms are numb.
                        Weighs the long pole
                                    in sighs, side to side.
                                     
And we can see 
            the waters waiting
                        the letting go
                                 the urge to.
 
He inches ahead
            each second of inertia 
                        a pinpoint 
                                    from which we too
                                                step forward.  

This poem was previously published in Muddy River Poetry Review. 

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was also published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara. 

diana cole
Diana Cole

Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, Main Street Rag, Cider Press Review, Friends Journal, The New Verse News and Orison Books. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press and her latest book, Between Selves, in 2023 by Indian Press, Cyberwit.net. Recently, she was awarded 2nd place in the Notable Works 2024 Poetry Initiative.  She is a senior editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal. 

 

 

Spellbound by Elaine Sorrentino

 

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

Listen to Elaine Sorrentino reciting Spellbound


 

The last time I knew innocence
I was surrounded by breathtaking 
 
steadily booming over the falls
misting our awe-struck faces 
 
confirmation we are mere specks
in the realm of natural wonders.

I could have lingered there forever 
drinking in its mesmerizing thunder 
 
unknowingly balanced on the fraying
thread between well-being and illness  
 
before scalpels, needles, chemical
treatment made their grand entrance; 
 
momentarily living in the presence
of ferocious power, I could not get enough. 

 

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.
 

sorrentino
Elaine Sorrentino

 
Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Ekphrastic Review, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Writing in a Women’s Voice, The Poetry Porch, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com.