Tricia Elliott

Shadows Another raven ruffles night sky feathers in watery  sunlight, the kind balanced in ridge-rise for a breathy quarter-tide and from the aspen, looks  east, where beams slide south  to pool like wax  or shadows  cast in re-membered poppy and…

Late Fall Against the green, a flash of white like lightning, or a floater. The dogs leap after hare in winter wear a breath between hemlocks, mossy squirrel cone  scatter, the mushroomed pale faerie ring. A whiff  of magic lingers…

Regaled On the day the moose stopped morning traffic             bent under spreading tines             and pheromones the dog rolled in a urine-scented wallow.             Later, when the clear night’s frost              began to soften, freeing the aven’s curl to mark the slanted light,…

Tracks The hardest day with the cadaver wasn’t bisecting  eyes, unpeeling genitals, or sawing through skull to the muted corrugated brain within, but dissecting hands. Last night I dreamt of tendon-strung puppets  heavily-lined palms, nails chewed to the quick each cut between hands…

Crescent Moon Wolves sang an evening song when the moon was a slender saffron slip not cinema-full over popping buttons and silvered claws but a scissored cut-out in jack-o-lantern glow its hue a match for ripe gooseberry  soft skin of…

When Trees Fall Yes of course we make a sound. All of us herehearingwhen you do not.  Just this morning (as you slept) every stone spoke in a vibratory roar so loud, the sea responded in kind. Spruce, bark-beetled and…

Treasure Twice now the younger dog has brought home bony bits of dried, twisted skin, one side pale-rough, the other dense with soft brown fur  so like her own. I too have nosed some treasure out of forest duff, like…

Origins Black capped shrieks tear the sky into sharp angles  winging vivid pale across blue, catching  the midnight sun’s  horizon light  in scarlet blades. There are none fiercer near nests, except every mother.  It’s unwise to generalize  about arctic terns…

Skipping Stone Sun When the bears emerge, blinking, filling  their risen loaf lungs with  bracing blue sky the sun is already high, skipped  across seas of feathered cloud crests like a thin stone thrown, no longer low-angled but  flicked-winged and…

Wolf’s Track The steady staple shrew tracks ended in  owl wing hush, a loss so singular I mourned. Last night, the long  late winter sun  stained the mudflats frozen rose, the clear sky  persimmon. Even the mountains blushed.  Today, fresh…