Inheritance

The old boat that's rotting away in our yard is little more than a broken shell now. Recently I noticed that the decomposing planks have become the substrate for a crop of lichen stretching up a myriad little  cups on skinny arms.

The boat I've reliably been informed was built a century ago  and must have served as a coastal fishing vessel for many decades before it finally dropped anchor. 

Before that its timber would have been part of living trees, their roots in the ground as intimately connected with microscopic fungi as is the symbiotic structure of the lichen. 
It's not hard to imagine what will truly inherit the earth.

As she was.