niagara & me

at Niagara

you reminded me what love was like

when you said

 

“we should take a photo of you by the Rainbow Bridge

because you’re more colorful

and one of me by the Horseshoe Falls cuz I’m a horse’s ass”

 

this bonding through abject identification

tough love like ten dollar steak dinners

with bad Merlot on Clifton Hill

 

by wax museums, Frankenstein fun houses

the not so distant mist of rocky crevasses of doom

cheap, tasty, humourous

 

and the story about you and our cousin

atop an unfinished skyscraper in Edmonton

overlooking Jasper Ave.

 

the foreman got the three of  you

into a roddy on the spot

had the crane operator lift you into the sky

 

shit portals below you

heavens above

you almost pissed yourself from motion sickness and fear

 

cheap, tasty, humourous

 

these are the tales left to us brother

likening prismatic sprays and equine footwear over one of nature’s wonders

- unlikely flights in portable lavatories - to our comic lives

 

cheap, tasty, humourous

 

our father gave us crass doggerel and the gift of the gab

this is all we have from which to forge

to find the broken bonds of birth 

 

try to heal them now

in our final decades

 

daddy cried with his eyes closed

laughed when he woke

sadness slipping into mirth

 

always on the verge of tears

trying to reconcile differences that can only be softened

by these flights, these winged waterfalls

sheer drops into hilarity

as we tumble back

into love that spoke it’s name

 

through such terror ridden barrel rides

through rainbows, skirts of torrential dew

through impossible reconciliation made good from

 

laughter, memory

shot through with pliable forgiveness

and you