The Lonely One

Kathleen Foster

Nothing is more weighed with grief
Than the print of a leaf
Brown, fossil-hard on the ground.
And he remembers the grooves
Left by deer hooves
When the swift troop sped.
A life dries
To a rind, and lies
In its mound.
He has too stern a heart to grope
For ease in any wistful hope;
Yet, spellbound in the shadowed air,
Time after time he will stand and stare
On the hollow tracks of the dead.