Tricia Elliott

for Kris Birthrightfor Kris She cleaned the cooling bird  outside the kitchen window, her deft fingers rolling the feathered skin like socks tearing the gossamer threads of connective tissue  until the pale lines unfolded, steaming on a bed of damp…

Pride Mountain blooms parade in showy mats, in clusters  scattered across scree. Preternatural is a judgement. Fragile  is another. Meanwhile, oxytrope grows alchemizing stone to soil  with symbiotic bacterial teams. So transforms the world, breath  by breath by breath. In…

Re-membering About edges? Ask alder moving in multitudes, reaching across gaps from seed or root expanding, augmenting like musical fifths like mycelium outpacing the math  with alchemical variables enriching at cuts – divides depletions. Edges are  like that – sudden,…

Myth Snow falls. A forgotten willow             stripped to storm sky gray             elbowed by alders shelters a lynx in a twining foot hollow.              Groomed, rested             the cat moves on leaving tawny hair              caught             on a broken bough. Sunrise. Spring tracks melt…

Parable of the Sown Yesterday coyote tracked hare across the ridge  laying a skipped stone trail over soft rabbit lope sowing together an old, old story which every creature tells, eventually and every creature knows. No tale goes unnoticed ever.…

Fact-Checking Overnight, the meadow grew fangs. Diamond-encrusted and bladed they glitter  landfast and impenetrable, like a breathless certainty until the forest twitches as hare. Elated the dogs give chase shattering the hoar frost  with bounding leaps pivoting fluidly  like a…

Unnamed, for Inauguration Day As the sun rolls across the ridgetop  in another rise-set, thirteen ravens  tangle like glossy clowns in midair hurtling toward treetops, littering the valley with shrieks and rattles while the dogs and I watch  like Eve:…

Prisons Once on a forgotten beach  filled with sea and death we came by a rotting whale. From pooling flesh reached bleaching bones in snaking knobs and soaring arcs, striping  the horizon into a cage. I backed away breathless, ill…

Leap For hare, coyote’s mouth is a box of blades a perfect fit around slope of ear and curve  of leg  as if meant for this alone. It’s tempting to make meaning of the dividing and scattering, of how a…

The Blue Hour The jay bird’s forest is dappled and green-furred. Stones keep time beneath trees ringed with stories. Curiosity leads here. Come cloaked in the blue hour.  Press your face to the moss and speak your heart’s desire. It…