Now they stand knee-deep in the good, tilled earth of our gardens and fields, bestowing their gift of fruitfulness, as they have since the end of the last Great Ice.
Call them the Clay Ladies.
But come winter, what then?
To ask is to know.
Of course the Mothers do not stand in the fields all winter long, buried in snow.
Rather, they lie asleep in the jars, the bins, the cellars where we store the foods that will keep us through the cold, the seeds that we will sow next year.
And then in the spring they rise again, to do their work of wonder.
And at the end, as archaeologists find, we lay them down with our dead.
For will the Clay Ladies not rise again?
And are the dead not seeds?
Sculpture: Joanna Hajduk, Glinka Design
Photo: Magda Kielar