Ellie Davies, Between the Trees #3, 2014 (Artist Website)
C-Type Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper
Night slips, falls. White smoke from our campfire
weighs three bundles of one thousand hawk tail feathers.
Bed down, we bed down. So the sun goes up
and up goes the bloodroot growth.
We call our father his name until he’s no longer our father.
Jack, we say. Jack, Jack, we sing. Jack: shrapnel edge of our last can.
Jack: the mountain laurel mountain fire.
And near, a rock’s lush moss mumbles softly to itself, as our demented mother.
Near, too, there is a thin creek and it runs high.
We turn to one, and one, and then the other.
Here: sister, brother, brother.
Hemlocks fall around us. We’re forgetful.
We blame parasites, the rain-mold, our fragmented mother.
We would crow keep not silent if others were,
stumble through the fiddleheads for pelts.
We would sing be not far from me if any other were.
Editorial Note: Elizabeth Leo was a poet, teacher, and gardener who received her MFA in poetry from West Virginia University. Before her untimely death in 2019, Elizabeth crafted poems whose images are at once beautiful and uncanny, influenced by the natural world, fairytales, and fables. Elizabeth avoided submitting her work during her lifetime, apprehensive of literary rejection. Her family, friends, and fellow MFA graduates believe her poems are noteworthy and deserve an audience. With the permission of Elizabeth's mother, friend and colleague Natalie Homer submitted these poems posthumously on Elizabeth's behalf.