Jane Whitledge

Softly they come thumbing up from firm ground protruding unharmed. Easily crumbled and yet how they shouldered the leaf and mold aside, rising unperturbed, breathing obscurely, still as stone. By the slumping log, by the dappled aspen, they grow alone. A dumb eloquence seems their trade. Like hooded monks in a sacred wood they say: Tomorrow we are gone.