Tricia Elliott

  Concurrence   Tracker, between the refreezing night sounds, crisp and starlit, we hear you dreaming of vivid blue skies and mountaintop tundra. Ptarmigan and hare crouch in bearberry and birch. One of us lopes across lichen bright rocks, pauses,…

  Crucible   Above, the goshawk flashes smoke tipped wings, a dark blaze across smudged blue sky.   Such a bare chested faith in feathers, thermals, hollow bones.   Does it dare you to follow, to believe?   Trust isn’t…

  Uncovering   Do you see the antler? There, among the brush and crusted snow extends a single tine, like a nunatak — hinting at what lies beneath.   As you dig and pull and heft, imagine the stony press…

  Reflection   Human, we heard you coming — the tangled, grumbling footfalls drumming the still soft ground, exhales trailing in clouds.   You stopped, crouched near, staring naming another’s bones   nested in goldenseal, bunchberry, moss; these long metatarsals,…

  Hoar Frost   Sometimes, conditions create gems out of fog and chill and darkness.   What seemed an endless, wintry unchanging   one morning greets us, flashing fractals of illumination,   transforming self-similar patterns into crystalline truth. ]]>

Sanguine   The moose walks into the blowing snow, unhurried. Such a steadfast pace, this sanguine peace within the gale.   Snow gathers on guard hairs. Adorned, it crosses the clearing, patiently placing each step, climbing the drifted slope, kissing…

Definitions   Apoptosis: the highly regulated enzymatic process of intentional cellular death.   Why death? What if the intention was life? No, I understand our careful definitions wield a distance from within. They are so useful and so valid.  …

  Sum   Stillness holds motion. Don’t believe us? Look closer. Lichen look still, even simple,   but our universe is not. We are an alliance of algae and fungi, a symbiosis of two kingdoms. We drape from trees, spread…

  Unadorned   The owl blinked over yellow eye moons, then dismissed the screaming, diving jays with one hiss each.   Every heart knows the unadorned truth. It is this clean hiss, this unruffled stand, this flash of mirrored light.…

Moonlit   Sometimes things align.   Yes, I’ll wait while you knock on wood and give me that look like now, now you’ve done it. Now you’ve invited that other shoe and the sky, falling, and that single bolt of…