At my plain brown desk

poised and ready
with my new black pen,

hopeful as a calico on the prowl,
I lift my nose to the air.

Catching a fresh scent,
I pad soundlessly through

the valley of white lily bells
and gracious blue violets,

swoosh through moldering leaves,
stand under the Mayapple umbrellas,

slink around the White pine,
curl into the fiddlehead furl,

watch that rascally grey squirrel
fluff her fluffy tail

as she leaps and stitches
the bobbing branches

into one seamless
sumacmaplehickoryoakpine forest

while I wait.
Wait for a flutter, a trill,

a rustle, a warble, a whistle –
a carol of my own.

Elizabeth Palmer Kellogg writes poetry and makes quilts – piecing together words and piecing together scraps into works that are more than the sum of their parts. Her poems have been published in Spillwords, Red Eft Review, and One Sentence Poems. She works as the assistant to the Director of Research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She resides in Richland, Michigan with her husband. (And their little dog, too.)