Tricia Elliott

  Humpback   As the blown spray fades above its dorsal fin a humpback slips back beneath the surface   and you send with it a sifting place, a lonely piece, one that turns always into the wind   while…

  Stillness   It was just  as you’d imagined it.    Kittywakes, murres, even puffins swam  through the air with flashing wings, white swoops spreading  like a summer storm   or a comet, each bright and bold against  your dark…

Sea Star The sea star clings to the sharp rock walls in salted purpleas if a sweat-stained cape draped its many shoulders with superhero ease. It waits for the sea while I watch, disarmed by the question of low tideand turn…

Cottongrass When the fifth season comes, dressed in flames and smoke,the cottongrass bloomwaving wild heads like umbrellas. Have you seen them? They think of nothing elseas if each stem were a prayertheir damp feet, believers, tirelessly searching the shrinking swampsfor…

  Contribution   To change the world, she says,   become  the mouse.   Let go of the sky and the buzzing, dazzling city release even the tree furred mountains and follow the rain  to your feet.   Pause there…

  Lived   If you come closer, said the bone, leave your hope behind, and  your hopelessness too   there is room for all  but that in this mossy cathedral   where what sustained  one leg now serves another  …

  The Storm   Summoned, the storm  charges over the mountains sending ahead of its dense burden a chill wind   crowding the blue with grey  billowing quilts   and you realize we have all done this  to a clear…

Geography Like sutures in a skull, we have stitched ourselves together,two lives in apposition at the measured pace of bone smooth here, jagged there, a mountain range of momentstracked in zippered contour lines which have led us, undeniably, to the…

  Design   The fern opens by the wood pile   sinuous and surprising   an act less about choice than a vibrant vulnerability   a design   unmatched  by the forms that surround it   leaving no doubt  as…

  Passing   The cloud moves its cold body across the sky and with one great inhale saps the warmth from your own   leaving you breathless, numb to the firm curve of rib, lost to the rise of soft…