The maples are communicating, even when
we’re not. The tree
we thought was dying
came back. Perhaps
with subterranean help from its neighbours.
Do we master our plant-ness’,
our animality?
Do we find a balance-
point for our heavy
frenzied heads
frenzied hea on the moveable fulcrum?
Ruin is normal,
a corvid thing—the black
bird caws its song, the yellow leaves in the maples
bird caws its son keen.
A philia thing—like broadhand interconnection.
I woke up feeling queasy today, as if I’d lifted
weights and laboured heavily in my sleep,
the black on my chest—a fun-fur
cat, a throw for the bed
with a flap underneath
for a hand. Animated yellow eyes. Its tail
caressed my face, like a simulacrum.
a yolk through d Like last night’s Scorpio moon—
a yolk through dirty-
purple stratus clouds—horizontal bodies /
purple stratus clouds— balancing anvils—
Bio
Elana Wolff
Elana Wolff lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario—the ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations. Her writing is widely published in Canada and internationally, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has recently appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Antigonish Review, Arc, Best Canadian Poetry 2021 and 2024, Contemporary Verse 2, DUSIE, FreeFall, Galaxy Brain, The Nashwaak Review, Prairie Fire, Pinhole Poetry, and Yolk. Her collection, SWOON, received the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry; her cross-genre Kafka-quest work, FAITHFULLY SEEKING FRANZ, was released with Guernica Editions in fall 2023.