On the Path
The pressure to reveal yourself
disappears in faces
of ocean waves, slapped back
into foam into sky
into bird’s wing, hyper-tense and apathetic.
Brief reprieve from atrocity, white foam washes
brown rock. In ten thousand years everything
crumbles. Today pelicans dive
over otter heads, dolphin spouts, seal suns
past the breakers. The tidepool is a mirror:
you are wind, shadow. Solid rock under water
shimmers—magma core to radiant surface.
The Comet Summer
There, her longing, pulled taut
like crossbows fastened on the deer
who drinks from the high-summer stream--
sipping, not salacious, delicate,
white-tailed, flipping—there she dances
in the burgeoning sweetlight
of the comet summer’s moon.
Deeper than her longing for time
beyond the August hour where
centipedes eat browning leaves, her hope grows
like blackberries in the thistle, drowned
in simple syrup, cocktail of clockticks. Deeper
than clocksand, a valley of shadows
and trances looms. Deeper than valleys,
one small flower blooms. Elemental
music sifts beneath the old-growth
vines. She dances. The clockbell
chimes. Deeper than August, a season
like a miracle appears. The bows slip--
the deer vaults the stream and lands
here—hooves of ironsoil glisten.
Katieann Vogel is a graduate student at Pacific University's MFA program, where she is a Katherine Dunn Merit Scholar. She advises on the University Library Board for Equity and Diversity, as well as works in her Monterey, CA community as an aquatic and outdoor educator. Her work has appeared in the Poet Sanctuary Anthology, the Children and Nature Network, and Thought Catalog. She honors her grandmothers, the ocean, and changing tides in her poems.
On the Path
The pressure to reveal yourself
disappears in faces
of ocean waves, slapped back
into foam into sky
into bird’s wing, hyper-tense and apathetic.
Brief reprieve from atrocity, white foam washes
brown rock. In ten thousand years everything
crumbles. Today pelicans dive
over otter heads, dolphin spouts, seal suns
past the breakers. The tidepool is a mirror:
you are wind, shadow. Solid rock under water
shimmers—magma core to radiant surface.
The Comet Summer
There, her longing, pulled taut
like crossbows fastened on the deer
who drinks from the high-summer stream--
sipping, not salacious, delicate,
white-tailed, flipping—there she dances
in the burgeoning sweetlight
of the comet summer’s moon.
Deeper than her longing for time
beyond the August hour where
centipedes eat browning leaves, her hope grows
like blackberries in the thistle, drowned
in simple syrup, cocktail of clockticks. Deeper
than clocksand, a valley of shadows
and trances looms. Deeper than valleys,
one small flower blooms. Elemental
music sifts beneath the old-growth
vines. She dances. The clockbell
chimes. Deeper than August, a season
like a miracle appears. The bows slip--
the deer vaults the stream and lands
here—hooves of ironsoil glisten.
Katieann Vogel is a graduate student at Pacific University's MFA program, where she is a Katherine Dunn Merit Scholar. She advises on the University Library Board for Equity and Diversity, as well as works in her Monterey, CA community as an aquatic and outdoor educator. Her work has appeared in the Poet Sanctuary Anthology, the Children and Nature Network, and Thought Catalog. She honors her grandmothers, the ocean, and changing tides in her poems.
