Sarah Carey on “The Attraction to Niagara”

The one and only time I have been to Niagara Falls was over 20 years ago during a side trip from Buffalo, where my husband's middle son was soon to be married. I've never forgotten the sheer magnificence of the steep walls of water, or how it felt to be surrounded by the roaring rush of sound so full of nature’s primitive ferocity. I remember feeling overwhelmed and so small in the face of the kind of beauty someone could die for — and, as I learned from a guide there, many had.

I also noticed that the fencing around the area where we were seemed very low and not well made or fortified, and was shocked at how easy it would be for anyone wanting to take that final plunge, to do so. I thought to myself: why on earth wouldn't there be more precautions, more protections, more signs, guards, etc., at a place like this, to protect people from themselves?

Images of the falls along with questions I formed during and after my visit stayed with me for some time. I started doing some research into the place's history and learned a lot about the daredevil exploits of the tightrope walkers whose names are part of the local lore as well as national history. I actually started working on this poem soon after my trip there — yes, two decades ago — but never could quite finish it. And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either.

One of the things I do to jumpstart my creative process, especially when I don't feel I’m capable of writing something new, is to excavate an older poem from my “dead,” or inactive files, and contemplate it again, with the detachment of time hopefully working in my benefit, to see if it might speak to me.

This was such a poem. The devastating beauty of the falls struck a chord within me as perhaps it sings to a self that is haunted by whatever it is we all would be willing to live, or die, for, as well as the juxtaposition of nature's forces with the forces of human nature. “The Attraction to Niagara” was my attempt to wrestle with that juxtaposition.