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
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/.
Great Blue Heron in the Niagara Glen Photo by Ken Gierke
Consider the river that cares not
what man thinks of it, churning
over obstacles that will not impede it
in a gorgeous canyon, miles from
a roaring cataract yet filled with the sound
of a rapid staccato best heard at the water’s edge,
that edge approached with peril for it cares not
what safety one desires when near, its own safety
never at stake, raging as it does at the disservice
served upon it, the waters it carries never truly clean,
yet powerless, despite its power, to change that course.
Now walk the trails that lie beside it, trails
that care not whether they are trod by soled feet
or the pads of wildlife content to share
with those who understand the fragile nature
of their home, this pocket of green. Marvel
at the escarpment that once was the falls
as the river wore at its limestone foundation
in its inexorable march to the current home
of those falls. Move briefly through shadow
between boulders larger than a house,
cleaved from the side of the wall towering
above you, as you wind your way to the river.
Watch a heron pull a fish from the water as you sit
on the rocks at the river’s edge, then gaze
at the roiling water beside you, sun glinting
from the foam of the rapids. Follow that light
to see the sun approach the crest of the gorge,
all the while taking in the green that surrounds you,
green that would not be had it not been preserved
by those who understand its fragile nature.
Source: The author, 2026. First published 2021 at Earthweal
This poem was inspired by walks in the gorge at Niagara Glen. The attached photo of a great blue
heron was taken there.
Watch Ken Gierke perform Gorgeous
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/.
The Niagara River, the strait of water between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, carries all of the water of the upper Great Lakes. Much of the thirty-six mile length of the river was lined with industry, including within the gorge below Niagara Falls. The majority of that industry is gone, with the few remaining on the US side in the stretch north of Buffalo. While stricter regulations and ambitious cleanup campaigns, from the late twentieth century onward, reversed much of the degradation of the lakes during the industrial era, toxic sediments still exist and agricultural runoff remains a serious problem. The Canadian side of the Niagara River is a true parkway, maintained by Niagara Parks of Ontario. Beyond the falls, from the whirlpool to the end of the gorge is Niagara Glen, where a stairway descends the gorge wall to join four miles of trails that lead to the river’s edge as they wind through a Carolinian forest. When I lived in New York, I often crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls, just to walk those trails. The rapids within the gorge range from Class III to Class V.
What is local democracy?
Is it quiet or is it loud?
Does it only involve a few?
Or does it involve a crowd?
What are the issues that matter?
Infrastructure, programs or taxes?
Can we break through all of the chatter?
Many different perspectives. Some want and some need.
A lot to consider, yes indeed.
Who will benefit and who will be left behind?
Can democracy be kind?
In order to build, you must take part.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to start.
Source: The author, 2026
Lori Lococo is a long-time Niagara Falls (Ontario) City Councillor, and who works at Consult Niagara, which provides Project Management including Election Campaigns and Office Logistics.
This is a body in the river, touching to the air below the surface of water. This is the river’s
current hitting the limbs, turning into slow-motion acrobatics. These are stars above dancing
electrons. Arms move the swinging planets dot the measured tempo of orbits swoop the water
with arpeggios and arias and asteroids. This left arm curls from its apogee under the chest. This
chest rolls like a moon distracted by a looming nebula. These legs fold in a gesture of almost
exuberance. This hair trails in jellyfish lines, then, here, the body pivots and chases the hair like a
dashing zodiacal squid. Here, the skin is calm. Here, porous. Here the water lures the body, as if
calling it into a dance. Here, the water seeps into the cells of the body, becoming one with it.
Porous as the letter o opened into the letter u.
The body accelerates with the current working towards a crescendo. The body gains a dissonant
speed crashing against stones like cymbals. The clothing has been torn. The body is leaking. The
bones within it are steadily breaking from the various hits. The bones are becoming a dust inside.
Mixed with blood and water, the bones become an elixir, an ambrosial drink of life. The drink is a
gift to all that still wants to live in the water. The body’s blood tapers after like an effulgent scarf
reaching towards an ancestral moon. The blood tells the story of the body in the river
There is the body in the river approaching the great waterfall. As the body nears the cataract, one of
its hands brushes up against its neck and maps out the old geography of love as if it were recalling
favoured memories. The water pulls and tugs the body in a dance that grows erotic and ribald. The
body is an object and a subject. It moves with the water as if it desired this dance, desired to be
desired, rushes toward the elegy called love. The churning water has dredged up cloudy silt. The
body is not visible from one end to the next. There is a kind of ecstasy in this confusion. There is
too much to feel. Death swarms and settles like dust in a rainstorm.
There is no control. The body swings out over the cavernous gulf, and pirouettes with the falling
water’s rabid froth into the night air. Nobody on the river shores has seen the body. It would be
impossible to call it anything but a streak, a smear, a shadow of a form. To see it would be to invite a
kind of madness, to jump headlong into an abyss. We train ourselves not to see this kind of
disturbance. The body as it falls with the water becomes one with nothing. The arms spin. The
blood falls with a different gravity. The body achieves a calm poise as the world around it tumbles
up to down, blood to night. There is a body in the falling water.
There is a body in the falling water. With one last wrestle with the angels, the body sinks deep under
the wide wall of mist. The body has been beaten by its journey. It has no ears to hear. It has no eyes
to see. It has no mind to love. It cannot leave itself, cannot offer mercy or give thanks. It surfaces
downstream. It seems to invite forgiveness. With all its secrets told, petals unfolded, its forgiveness
floats away. It is an image of perfect sadness, perfect loneliness. Satiated, enough, steadfast, firm. It
is a form sliding beneath a bridge, battered in between two distant shores. It has completed its arc of
remembrance.
Gregory Betts
The Body is a poem to be published in an upcoming book by Gregory Betts.
Gregory Betts is a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and an award winning poet and editor with many books and chapbooks to his credit. See them on Goodreads
As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project on April 9, 2026, Shannon Mitchell on behalf of MPP Wayne Gates presented this congratulatory certificate.
At the celebration, each speaker was introduced with a limerick, and each of the speakers was invited to write and perform a poem of their own.
MPP Wayne Gates speaking in the Ontario Legislature
The introduction to MPP Wayne Gates, written and recited by Andrew Porteus, read:
Our dear MPP is Wayne Gates
And havoc at Queen’s Park he creates
He’s got quite the ‘stache
That makes such a flash
When a cabinet minister he berates
Shannon Mitchell wrote and recited a haiku at the event:
Ontario budget Deep cuts across the board Community rises
