Even knowing the falls are out there
somewhere in the woods, patiently
hewing the gorge open, a walker
could mistake its grind for the shred
of the wind through old timber;
might forget the heft of the stair-cased
rock and the sheets and mists steadily
spalling these hills down to a fat delta;
would invite a silence into her mind,
nourish the hitch that floods her groin
when the glen opens and be surprised
again by the name of every tear that ever
pitched itself from the shelf of her cheek.
ANDREW VOGEL listens, teaches, and walks the hills in rural eastern Pennsylvania, homelands of the displaced Lenape peoples. His poems have appeared in issues of The Blue Collar Review, Poetry East, Off the Coast, Slant, The Evergreen Review, Parhelion, Hunger Mountain, Tule Review, The Briar Cliff Review and elsewhere.