Tag: niagara poet

Lake Erie by Cole McInerney

lake
Waterfowl on Lake Erie. Photo by Cole McInerney

The tide rises,
suggesting the season,
stealing the stairs.
I sit in competition
with the horizon,
wondering which of us
blinks first.
Remembering the anniversary
of my grandmother’s death
to be eight or nine years ago,
yesterday.
On that last day
she struggled out of bed,
laughing at the difficulty.
My grandfather
helped the tanker ships
retire from the lake,
until the ice breaks.

The tide recedes,
suggesting the season,
returning the stairs.
I think of you
rather than sleep,
ignoring my eyes
and the moth at the screen.
A stranger with your voice
laughs on the beach,
staggering into the water,
hurrying back out.
Eventually I dream,
within it you write to me.
In the caverns of the fantasy,
the landscape blinked.
The light at its farthest reach
sank into the sea,
and we laughed at the difficulty.

Source: The author, 2021

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.

Follow Cole McInerney on Instagram

Follow Cole McInerney on Linktr.ee

See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:

•     The Buildings of the Dream
•     Convenient Corner
•     Lake Erie
•     Russell Street

Unheard Niagaras by A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

wetherald
Portrait of Ethelwyn Wetherald. Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

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.

Achilles in Time and Space by David Hobberlin

achilles 

achilles
Homer and His Guide (1874) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau


Ilium’s sword is overcome by Homer’s spear.
An epic verse that masks and masks again
the players in a drama cast in stone.
They come from out the mind to appear
as Grecian warriors reborn in the flesh;
who caught up in the battlement of war
suffer mortal wounds. Yet, as heroes dare
to gain the spoils that others can but wish.
I do not see the man whom Homer was
for he is too cloaked within the path of time.
The sharpened stylus moving with the rhyme
of atom touching atom only finds the fair Achilles;
not the hand that writes him on the stage,
not the mentor of this student of the page.

September 1995
Source: The author
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.

Grey Borders Books published three chapbooks of my poetry – Inanna  (A Tale of Sumer),  Reflections on the Republic, and Going to Work on a Snowy Morning. Click to visit the David Hobberlin page on the Grey Borders Books website
The Indian Heritage Council of Morristown, Tennessee, published a limited edition chapbook ‘The Pipe Maker and Other Poems’ in the millennial year 2000.

The Sentinel – A Reflection on Xanadu by David Hobberlin

sentinel

sentinel
The Caravan By Edwin Lord Weeks, 1877

In the vigil that I keep
with those who only seem to sleep
birds herald the arrival of the dawn
as Balthazar comes to Babylon.
Though still the shadows of the night
bestir the brightness of this light
I feel a tremor on my hands
along the boundary of these lands
of mystic forces following him
across the desert’s giant rim
to meet the city with the sun;
another day of life’s begun
that brings upon this caravan
the dream of hope within the man.
Beware! Beware! I have heard the cry
from off this wall that I occupy
of weary hearts on domes of ice
where runs the sacred river Alph;
whose golden strands filter down
to sunless seas where men are bound
in ancient caverns fathomless.
Drawn each to each by their loves embrace.
For now there enters something new,
a horizon lifting with the dew.
A minstrel on a dulcimer
plays his song into the air.
This instrument a rare device
floating above these caves of ice
to touch me with its magic thrice.
The voice a measure of the verse.
So shall I linger, wake or sleep
in the vigil that I keep.

March 2020
Source: The Author
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.

Grey Borders Books published three chapbooks of my poetry – Inanna  (A Tale of Sumer),  Reflections on the Republic, and Going to Work on a Snowy Morning. Click to visit the David Hobberlin page on the Grey Borders Books website
The Indian Heritage Council of Morristown, Tennessee, published a limited edition chapbook ‘The Pipe Maker and Other Poems’ in the millennial year 2000.

So She Flows by April Jones

jones2
The Spirit of Niagara from the Pan American Exposition, 1901

As we all stand in awe of her beauty, her power and her blessings,

Her hair cascades ever downward draping over her shoulders just as it should so fluently over every obstacle in its path,

And her breath emanating from her soft lips in the brisk air rises so high above, disappearing into the clouds,

Her sloping breasts just visible beneath her loose blouse,

Upon her face a sense of peace, but in her eyes a rampant ferocity as the light flirts and dances with every perfect angle.

How does such beauty, serenity and chaos exist simultaneously?

She remains nameless to those who know better that this is a just a part of a bigger whole that requires no label, just appreciation, but to others she bears the title of Niagara Falls

 

Source: April Jones, 2019

So She Flows was originally an entry in the 2019 Niagara Falls Writer’s Festival Poetry Contest. The contest was cancelled.

April Jones is a real estate agent as well as being employed with a winery, which she feels allows for her to engage in two passions of hers, and wine is obviously something this region is well known for as well as by trade, which to her is creative and fascinating. Jones loves anything creative from reading to writing to visual art of most any media. She moved to Niagara three years prior with her three children from Toronto and fell in love with the region instantly, and she feels like her love affair with it has only deepened and will continue to. She is grateful to share her experience of a place almost indescribable to her.