Rosanne Wasserman

Grove
                           

This was her favorite metamorphosis, when the bright hunter put out his hand and almost
reached her flesh, but she had changed, and all he found was a hard brown spine and the
leaves with her words still on them. And he would stand, holding her, not getting it, not
able to know what she was or was saying, her message something for time to come, for
others hunted, pursued, trapped, or frozen like herself, for other trees, if trees can read, if
books can read each other, here in a grove she had tended herself at one time, now for
time to tend, as if there would be no end again, except as the story closed.