Tipped on its side, the glass jar houses women
in miniature. They hike the waxy spine of a long
rhododendron leaf. Each woman lugs a pack
and strapped to the bottom, a rolled sleeping bag
the size of a pill. What nightly warms her body
sealed inside. They reach a sage-green river
of Old Man’s Beard, a lichen too scraggly
to wade through and risk tangling their legs,
so together they build a footbridge of copper
pine needles. When night falls, they stitch the sinewy
strands of poplar bark through heron feathers.
They huddle beneath the makeshift tarp. Still,
a jagged rock of rose-quartz blocks the jar’s opening.
Their only way out is to climb up then squeeze
through a sliver of air. Hiking for as long as it takes
to re-emerge in the world that brought them here.