Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
The roar of Niagara Falls, while eluding sound, doesn’t fail to irradiate
sight with its jazzy waves and frothy strokes of jade — these sweeping
illusions, swallowed whole by the Deep, howl against deafening winds, westward
and warbling — veiling the fading sunlight holding Hope hostage—
as renegade avalanches are welcomed by a deluge of stratus tears wailing louder
than the Sky itself — the gaze lustily cascades over escarpments of
towering cliffs while the river’s limbs engulf the clamoring boulders — dark talons
of the night threaten to eviscerate the roaring cacophony of
discord with the manifestation of gloom alone— if the eyes can imagine the jaded
purging into the Deep, can that which does not roar still be Heard?
Ann Marie Steele wrote this ekphrastic poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, which was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.
Ann Marie Steele, who resides in Charlotte, NC, America, is a writer who dabs mainly in free
verse and prose poetry. She holds a BS in Journalism (News-Editorial), and an MA in Secondary
English Education. Ann Marie pens pieces about love and loss, and what she observes and
experiences. The loss of her youngest son, Brandon, has influenced much of her writing. Her
works have been described as “resiliently defiant.”
Ann Marie has been published in The Ekphrastic Review with her pieces Every Lilly Donned with
Grief, I Dare You, Pretty Please, and Hear Me Roar, as well as in Exist Otherwise with her poem
Scintillating Symbiotic Sea. When not teaching high school English, Ann Marie
enjoys partner acrobatics, where she can often be seen flying upside down.
