by Mary Ardery

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.

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Mary Ardery is originally from Bloomington, IN. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Missouri Review’s “Poem of the Week,” Fairy Tale Review, Cincinnati Review’s “miCRo” series, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize. You can visit her at maryardery.com.