LOVING SCRABBLE

by Tricia Knoll

"Hasbro pulls its support of Scrabble's organizing tournament organization -- the National Scrabble Association". --NY Times, July 14, 2013

Words for love: Japanese 2, Sanskrit 96, Ancient Persian 80, Greek 3, English 1

She, sidewinding from the center star: TWOS.

he building from sibilance, up to down: ONES

she slides, pushing tiles over and under ONES, LONESOME

grabbing g, he forges EGO

she built LOVE from loneliness

and he VAGUE from love

she bridges loneliness to vague: NAG

he pounced on VAGUE to USURP

and she that P for PAPA

he pushed TIT up to TWOS

triumph in hard combinations
bedding down together as if
WOO and WED
DARLING and ADORE
VEIL and LACE
TUX and TINGLE and COMMIT
outshone
YES down from YOKE
BUZZ and BLESS and BED,
JOY, JISM, SORROW, and SPARK
EX (triple word score) and SUE and LEFT
FIRE from IRE, ACE hung from AWE
STALE and MATE

she’s left at end with an unplaceable U
he with I


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who loves word games, plays several on her I-Phone and has known some scarey competitive women Scrabble players.

ON THE VACANT BRANCH OF THE SPOTTED OWL

by Tricia Knoll

Killing barred owls will aid recovery of Oregon's spotted owls, federal wildlife officials believe. --The Oregonian, July 23, 2013

Talons withdrawn, nests gone,
the spotted owl loses its grip
on security, abundance, old-growth,
silenced victims of manipulated
moaning forest. The wind hears
loss

in the call of the barred
owl, manifest west from the east,
filling a niche
like the coyote
jumping at chance, taking bets

to eat what the wolf wouldn’t,
go where the wolf couldn’t.

An answer: slaughter 3,600
barreds. Invite spotteds
to return and they will
say biologists managing trays
of barred dead. The wind
puzzles out wagers of kills
to save life.

A croupier spins the wheel.
Wrenching bets on black, and the ball
explodes.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. In these days of dwindling biodiversity, she was recently thrilled to see a barred owl on a highway stanchion in Seattle, a place the spotted would never light.

MOURNING THE BEES

by Tricia Knoll

WILSONVILLE, OREGON - June 30, 2013 - A bumblebee is caught in the protective netting draping the trees in a Wilsonville Target parking lot. An estimated 50,000 bees were killed when the trees in the parking lot were sprayed with the insecticide Safari on June 15. Molly J. Smith/The Oregonian, June 30, 2013.

Fifty-thousand is a medium-sized town
     Loveland, Colorado
     Pocatello, Idaho
     Lacrosse, Wisconsin
     Milford, Connecticut
wiping out any one is a slaughter

for bees,
50,000 might be five hives,
maybe one.

Dead bees dry up like cicada husks,
furred legs pump,
torsos circle directing
toward a hive they’ll never go home to.

They came for linden pollen,
the heart-shaped leaves, abundance.
and writhed in piles in a Target parking lot
wanderers, sojourners, victims
of Safari sprayed for aphids no one worried about.
The scientists wrapped the trees in baggies,
closing the juice bar
after the liquor turned lethal.

The people worried on those pollinators,
the canaries, busy-bodies on fruit.
Come to Target to mourn, carry your signs
Bee The Change
for bees who feed us

not knowing poison
as convenience.
Poison as death knell,
the dripping of our tears.

We have so little time
without the bees.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. As a master gardener who specializes in native plants, she grows some plants just for the pollinators. A righteous bunch of pearly everlasting is in bloom right now.

REST IN PEACEDEPENDING ON WHERE AND WHEN YOU FALL

by Tricia Knoll

“Mummies are a non-renewable resource” - the curator of the Mummies of the World exhibit in Portland, Oregon. Source: The Oregonian.

In Burlington, around Ethan Allen’s grave,
metal rifles fence him in side by side with plaques
honoring the Green Mountain boys.

But all is not well there in that boneyard.
Stern Vermont winters crack
the stones severing moth
from -er, a caretaker stacks
white marble pieces like poker chips.
In one photo, my shadow
looms at the top of the heap.

Or drape the caskets of the war dead
in flags, honor them off the planes
to the waiting hands of family,
palms cooled on steel. The rolls
of the dead renew themselves
in war, in genocide.

We say rest in peace
as if we mean it
and fight over the bones
the tribal first people
claim as Kennewick man.
Carry the eagle feather
where they walked.
There is no guaranteed right
to bury our dead.

Or, become an amateur
mummiologist,
view Germany’s collection
of preserved mummies collected
from all over the world
lost during World War II
but now on loan
to museums near you.
They are old, dried out,
they are the dead.
That woman who holds
two baby teeth, one in the palm
of each wrapped hand --

ask if she is at peace.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet whose poems have appeared in a variety of journals. She is neither anti-science or anti-education -- "but if these remains belonged to North American first people, she says, I do not believe they could be displayed in this way in this country."

THE LOOP AT NEHALEM STATE PARK ON SUNDAY

by Tricia Knoll

Brandon J. Prescott (U.S. Army photo)

I had to get out of the shore wind.
I’d eaten so much of it this week.
I choose the woods loop, where hawks swirl,
overseeing the weekend wind-down,
families packing pots, kites, kids’ bikes.
Shivered mist chased out two days of sun
and tastes of rain tomorrow. One unattended
campfire smolders sugar smoke.

Running the bike trail, I notice
how huckleberries grow best
cuddling up to pines and song sparrow
melodies dip below the ocean undercurrent
lullaby to blue lupine and white
strawberry blooms. Grandparents recover
on log benches from childcare stints,
the low tide laying slime flats open,
a smell of old sea.

I stop at the park ranger’s shack
to chew the fat about the bald eagles
circling the bay. I report the fire
smoldering. He says he'll put it out.

The park flags lie limp inside the
tree buffer. I ask the ranger why
both the U.S. and the Oregon
fly at half-mast. An Oregon boy
died in Afghanistan. Silence
without a voice in the wind.

I head out the only way
to a soft path through dunes
turn north on hard-packed beach.
The stiff wind finds my back.
That lost boy follows me home.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who lives some of the time in Manzanita, Oregon on the windswept northern Oregon coast. Her poetry appears in local and regional poetry journals as well as haiku publications.

WOMEN'S RITES

by Tricia Knoll

Image: A Mama’s Day E-card available from Strong Families

The crossword puzzle clue for 2 down
required a word for women’s rites leader.
I couldn’t parse any cross-current lines.
I combed through suffragettes and freedom fighters.
Sojourner, Amelia, Victoria, Abigail, Elizabeth and
tried to cram their names in. Margaret Sanger? Shacklers
to the White House gates? Rosa? Jane Roe?

Then I read it right -- rites.
The woman priest, absolver of wrongs?
Desolver of woes? Healer of hurts? 
End-of-days angel? Candlemaker?
Coiler of the womb cord? Doula?
She-who-washes-the-dead?

Nothing fit.
     Peacemaker
     Apple plucker
     Palm reader
     Stonemason
     Bread baker
     Bee tender
     Bed maker
     Caretaker
     Crone
     Godmother
     Goddess
     Sorceress
     Star eater

The answer in the next day’s paper: mother.



Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet and a proud mother.

THE AFTERMATH

by Tricia Knoll






At the very finish,
when all the banners fall
and the sirens silence on to home,
legs knocked out from under
holding dear traditions
in our cheers for those who dare
their best and longest and smartest
of what is mammal in us
and human racing
for the joy of wind
in our hair, and the silver blanket
descends, doubling us at the waist,

someone will count
all the ways we hurt
and all that we have lost.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who has run three marathons -- each a learning experience of potential and patience. She ran this morning in full sun behind a garbage truck -- and left home the fantasy that she was winning Boston.

THE SUPPORT OF SPORTS

by Tricia Knoll

The raffle of an AR-15 assault rifle to raise money for the Saint Helens Girls Softball League will get a public airing at a community meeting Thursday. --Stuart Tomlinson, The Oregonian,  March 20, 2013

I pulled a red Radio Flyer wagon
full of Girl Scout cookies from door to door --
when doors opened with smiles
we assumed were safe.

Despite my wicked field hockey stick,
in high school my only role I could play in sports
was timing the breast stroke in boy’s swimming meets.
Then I bought bras with a label saying Title IX --

and yes, I bought a Barbie Doll or two
for my daughter -- and watched without dismay
when the cattle dog chewed off an arm and then a leg.
I’ve sold dozens of dozens of tulips to raise

money for a high school trip to Paraguay
and delivered those bouquets in a mail cart
to workers’ desks in an office tower
for a month. Flimsy wrapping paper --

we sold that too. Silk-screened t-shirts
for soccer. Chocolate bars for track.
Magazine subscriptions for volleyball. Florida
oranges by the crate, delivered to front doors.

Joannie Benoit won gold in the first
women’s Olympic marathon -- a big moment
for this plowhorse-style distance runner.
Young girls, find your road to fitness,
sweat, movement, teamwork,
combat if you want it.

But please don’t raffle rifles.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet with a long, long love of sport and movement.

MOVING THE QUEEN

by Tricia Knoll

All she wanted when she fled up
north was to keep her child and man --
she hummed her song all along.   
All she wanted from mother’s day
was for her son and another
mother’s boy let each other live.

All she wanted from her locked chain
on the White House fence was to vote 
for a man for President.
All she wanted from a wheelchair
rolling her body to the voter’s booth
was a death with dignity.

All she wants running for office
is to oust the jerks who tell her
to do more with less and love it.   
All she wants from her website
is for Muslim and Jewish women
to read each other’s poetry.

All she wants from a pink t-shirt
is to walk with womenfolk
who celebrate survival.
All she wants from bumper stickers
is for neighbors to know
she yearns to marry Isabelle.

All she wants to find online
is work that lets her feed her twins
more than macaroni and cheese.
All I want from holding the queen
is to slide her fleet-foot fury
to checkmate the cross-head king. 


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. She never burned a bra but she walked in a Yale graduation in 1970 without one.

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN OREGON

by Tricia Knoll

The Bybee Timber Sale proposes logging directly adjacent to Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake is Oregon's only National Park and the backcountry forests that surround one of the purest lakes in the world should not be subject to the harmful effects of logging.

The Bybee logging project would log 1,300 acres in the proposed Crater Lake Wilderness. This would effectively cut off several intact wildlife corridors with logging and road building.  The project includes 12 miles of new roads. The logging would be enough to fill 7000 log trucks, which, if parked end-to-end, would stretch 73 miles from Medford to the boundary of Crater Lake National Park.

Not only would the Bybee Timber Sale imperil the fragile ecosystems of the park, but much of the logging would occur in the headwaters of the world famous Rogue River. The gushing, narrow canyons of the Upper Rogue should not be polluted by the sediment and logging debris from the Bybee Timber Sale.

People moved across this land, hunting,
blessing the roaming prey, practicing
plant wisdoms and reciting
chains of lineage. Fireside stories
from before the gathering of time
told of Llao from the
underworld and sky god Skell -- the battle
of their rising and falling, of Mount
Mazama and the cratered lake.

In that wildness of trees, rain, waves,
and crystal creeks, the people called themselves
the Bannock, the Chasta, the Chinook, the Kalapuya,
the Klamath, the Mollalla, the Nez Perce, Takelma
and Umpqua. Many journeyed to Celilo Falls
for the great trading, before
the dam and the rocks walls
that bore their picture stories
of ocean, gods and volcanos at war
slipped under the floodwaters.
Spaniards sailed the rocky coast,
never venturing to find that caldera
of water bluer than skies, or trees
rounding battleground of gods, scoured by fire,
scrabbling in rock, lifting to Skell
and rooting to Llao

before the people became ill
or furs traded out for hats and coats,
two hundred years before Meriwether,
the Oregon trail, railroads, statehood,
and or telling the people falsehoods.
Today: the men come to fell trees sprouted
in that long ago -- trees ten times the girth
of the human belt. Skell and Llao,
forces of below and above,
watch, the old war yet undone,
this battle of up and down,
over and over again. 


Oregonian Tricia Knoll knows that four hundred-year-old trees in Oregon are really BIG.

FUNDING FLUCTUATIONS IN THE TIME OF CROCI

by Tricia Knoll

Open Crocus (D.Salk)

Copyright © 2013 Darrell Salk

darrell-salk@tearbow.com

spring's gold cup
opens to a downpour
sequestration

heavy-lidded crocus
stars of cooling night --
closing loopholes


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet and Master Gardener with a fondness for haiku. Her husband Darrell Salk took the photo of the open crocus.

UNDER THE FULL WOLF MOON (OREGON 16)

by Tricia Knoll

In the third week of January a hunter in the Boise National Forest (Idaho) shot Oregon 16, a collared Oregon wolf.  Oregon Fish and Wildlife reported Oregon 16's death on January 24, but the shooting occurred the week before. Image source: Defenders of Wildlife

This January lamp of ice and silver

is stage light for wolf packs howling 

hungry at the treeline

below clouds scuttled in thawing winds,

under this full wolf moon

collared yearling Oregon 16, a gray,

left the Blue Mountains, crossed the wrong

north border, swam the Snake,

ran his wild miles

to Boise National Forest

where a hunter shot him --

second Oregon wolf

to die in Idaho

(media darling Oregon 7

made it to California -- 

without a shot fired)

with all the sadness trapped

in my breastbone for refugee

mothers inside fences of mud

holding babies dying

from typhus, for children

gunned down in elementary school 

and the hurts

of people shooting their brains out

in this gun-market world,

how is there room to mourn

Oregon 16

or how can 

there not be room

under his namesake moon

Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who has howled with wolves and been bitten in the neck by a captive coyote. She is working on a poetry chapbook about humans and wildlife in the urban environment.

WOMEN KEEP ON COUNTING

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: I love it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President.

For regular women like me
it’s possible to set an alarm
on any computer to remind
what day is most likely
what day is a bit late
what date is too late

Counting, getting to plus five
and no blood; we have been there,
regulars and irregulars
worrying
keeping silences

the want to be mothers
the can’t be mothers
the victims of others

the girl I knew
had to go to Mexico
and came back bloodied
sick and sterile
rocking in a chair
with her teddy bear

that was a long time ago
and women keep on counting


Tricia Knoll was a young woman before Roe v. Wade. She saw first hand the disintegration of a wonderful woman from a butchered abortion. Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.

MAGAZINES

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: 20 mm AA Guns

Magazines

once  seeing Life

now death 30 bullets at a crack

Tricia Knoll grew up in the 50s when the arrival of Life Magazine was a big deal for everyone in the family. A Portland, Oregon poet, she watches the mutations of word meanings. She maintains a daily haiku practice.