In lowering dark,
we drive the empty Canada streets,
Cathy and the kids and I,
looking for Niagara Falls.
We breathe in and out
together
as we round the next turn.
Source: Silver Birch Press, My Perfect Vacation Series, July 25, 2015. Click here to view the poem by Reardon on the Silver Birch Press website
Click here to visit Reardon’s website
AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPH: In the background, that’s Niagara Falls which Cathy, the kids and I did find. This was in July 2000, and it was at a lookout, I’m pretty sure, on the Canadian side.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I had a hard time thinking about a “perfect” vacation. Perhaps I’m too Catholic; nothing ever seems perfect. This image/memory rose up amid my confusion. It was, maybe, a perfect moment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick T. Reardon was 11 years old when he had his first essay published in a neighborhood paper in Chicago, and, over the next half century or so, he has been writing news articles, feature stories, essays, book reviews and poems, often for money. He has published five books and is midway through the writing of a sixth.