Niagara Falls.

It's like watching eternity take form.
It's like a talk between two hearts.
Flowing away forever and ever.
It's like seeing yesterday becoming today.
And today, tomorrow. Only forward. Forward only.
It's like seeing the word 'never' take its shape:
Shapelessness.
Never does it rest. Never will.
It's like saying—
'nothing' is the absence of 'everything';
Yet both co-existing.
It's like a beautiful dream.
But also a beautiful reality.

Source: The author, 2001.

See this poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website

She sailed
over the thundering
water to hover

in the rising plume
of a million mirrors glinting
with sunlight

as the ever-wall
of water fell
like a trick of curtains
and hidden doors

she was gone.

From our table rock view
we scanned the vast
crescent down
to where rapids eased
into churned foam

and there
bare-rolling to the surface
she bobbed
shaking her feathers out

bowing the fish in her beak
to the light.

Source: The Author, 2019

See this poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website

John Burch had come to America in 1773, and sided with the British during the American War for Independence. As a reward, he was given a land grant reaching from the mouth of Chippawa Creek to the Falls. In 1786, he built the first grist and saw mills in this area. The next mills were built in the area in 1794, and the settlement of Bridgewater (in Dufferin Islands) was started. Burch died in 1797. The American army burnt the mills in 1814, but they were soon rebuilt As time progressed, a woollen mill, distillery and tannery were built in this area. With the advent of steam power in the 1870s the water-driven mills became obsolete, and by 1887 the land was taken over by the Crown to become part of the Niagara Parks Commission park system.