THE DESERT OF ASHES
A Prose Poem by Joe Wehrle, Jr.
I stood alone in a grey expanse of ashes near a crystalline ledge beyond which I dared not peer. Around me towered great petrified fungi, turned by the machinations of time into strange sepulchral eidola which cast no apparent shadows in the incipient dawn.
From afar, above the sound of the dark waters tumbling and bubbling over the low escarpments, came an inchoate thudding as of enormous hooves falling in a dismal rhythm, and a terrible and quiet threnody voiced by unimagined larynges.
At length a dark caravan appeared atop the distant ridge, a train of monstrously alien fauna and ungainly, tall riders, dimly perceived in the manner or wraiths incarnate. Behind the titan mounts followed a line of bent, chained creatures who stirred the ashes in their wearied shufflings, and who mouthed that horrible yet plaintive song wafted across the stagnant air.
As I watched the weird traverse, I was aware of a half-awakened recollection, and of a pensive kinship toward those pitiable prisoners so shockingly disparate in form from myself. Involuntarily I raised my hands before my transfixed eyes to dislimn the vision.
Motionless as the granite fungi I stood, feeling the fetid and sterile desert breezed stirring against my naked limbs. Then, as an unreasoning fear welled in me, proportionate to the welled pulsing of the slow hooves, I fled and hid myself, wedging my body into the deep cleavage of a monolithic fungus. There I lay, shuddering at the infernal snorting of bestial nostrils and the cursed polyphony of lost souls.
Wehrle Portraits--Skilled Pencil Portrait From Your Photo
Please see our art, books and collectibles for sale on eBay
Read a short story "Strangers in Need" by Joe Wehrle, Jr.
Read "The Bandemar" short story by Joe Wehrle, Jr.
Read "Specialty Press Science Fiction in a Nutshell" Article by Joe Wehrle, Jr. with Cover Art Pictures
Read Vintage "1901 Around the World Race" Article by Jules Verne
Support world-famous Clarion Workshops
Subscribe to Clarion Workshops email list
Home Page for Joe Wehrle, Jr.
Joe Wehrle, Jr., PO Box 41, Punxsutawney, PA 15767-0041
(814) 938-8044