Sparkle of the Mica

by Tricia Knoll

Running the arroyo as the sun rises,
too many perfect stones to pocket
in no-pocket shorts.

Horse hoof prints sprawl under the sun,
and prickly pears hang over the eroded lip.
I dodge boulders and cowpies.

The miracle this morning –
a slab of weathered pinyon
shaped like a fish with a glass eye

swimming the drought arroyo.

Climate Change

by Tricia Knoll

Hold my hand to the cold fire,
dream fire, though I wince, dance
or run to the ice creek.

Hold me to the cold fire
that feeds on flames of questions
ignored as ash and wind-blow.

Old frozen thoughts
melt, drip, seep
toward that cave fire.

Demanding attention
how they go to earth
soaking half-hearted shadows.

Pretend at your peril the cold fire
is not always burning,
crackling done and overdone.

Gray Hope

by Tricia Knoll

I fold back our bed sheets this morning
to match the rolls of cloud billows
sliding like pillows into the naked hot sky.

My feet slip to the tuck at the mattress
to test the cool slickness that may be rain
on a horizon of gray hope

this drought might end.

A Bite Out of September Trout Lake, Washington

by Tricia Knoll

Last night gorge wind blustered down and shook the barn,
frantic wind to follow up weeks of droughted summer.

Crunchy hard fall pears, some call them winter pears, plunked
down into golden grass. We still hoped wind brought rain.

We got mist. Floaty fog, a sky-lifting mid-morning
curtain opening on foothills but not Mt. Adams. A gauziness

that did not water. The golden lab grabbed a knocked-down
tennis ball-green pear, tossed it as if it might bounce.

She took bites, one, then another and another,
one bite per fruit, the pears I’d hoped to poach.

Those pears with white, oxidizing-brown bites,
gouges the shape of fallen angels.

High Noon

by Tricia Knoll

Fantasies will end,
even swollen dream seeds
the red bird dropped
into your lusty loam.

Come a high spring sun,
let warmth pull forward
a green uneasy sprout
you never imagined.

To Start a Wander

by Tricia Knoll

Older than little, here on a threshold
to the woods that reconfigures
what was and is new. A worn duff
path to a next grand possibility,
a tinge of silver tomorrow in my sunset.
Do not speak of jawbones
called out long ago, just looseness
unwinding, how even a furled feather
hovers for footsteps
to start a wander,
a wander into deep green,
resolving the me
that still worships green.

The Word Nursery at New Year’s

by Tricia Knoll

Five words she scratches
in a dusting of snow-frost
below the gorge waterfall
pointing shards of ice –
 
    breath
    patience
    compassion
    endurance
    merging

One word the old woman
will choose as her touchstone
for next year, to notice, grab onto
each instance it appears before her,
repeat before sleep.
Past choices – simplicity, love,
witness, and resilience –
guided her bones.

The cold canyon wind
pulls tears and teases silver strands
from her green knit hat.
Sun floods
the low rock bowl
of the canyon,
edges toward her.  

She steadies
her scuffed boot
above the frosted cedar duff.
She decides.
Leaning, her fingertip erases
four possibles,
her slate melting, merging.

New Mexico Harvests

by Tricia Knoll

Beneath the searing dryness of the sun
the well-padded mestizo man paddled
in the iron pool at Ojo Caliente, recovering
from pressing cider. He moved
his arms as if they knew no other way
to circle. He spoke of blue corn, posole,
and today it was cider. So many apples.

The widow, lips chapped and cracked,
tugs vines in her waist-high vegetable bed
snarled with pumpkins and beans.
Her co-housing partners watch
thanksgiving coming on.

The deer sneak at midnight
to eat apples that thunk
down during the day.
They leave their pellets
and slink off
like clouds around the moon.