|
The Quarry
By James Kelleher, Goshen
Earth lies stripped.
Boulders, in sand craters,
eyeball the moon.
Ice hugs rock
like football shoulders.
The pond cracked at noon.
Snow comes creeping,
sneaking slow.
Gray geese give up
their honking call.
The gaunt northeaster
descends.
But life persists
and gives evidence:
one blown seed, a shiver,
deer scat
by a sharp rock:
December calling for June.
Wild grasses disappear:
swamp maples, icicle-armed,
shatter and fall.
Snow soaks through
the brown ground carpet,
the detritus, the pall.
Is death, then, all?
Sand clinging to stone?
The geese lie flat,
two spoons on slate,
the landscape cries for law —
the quarry remains, raw.
Once it held hardwoods:
oak, birch and cherry
trees bursting into leaf.
Phoebes whistled Spring
and white-tailed deer
grazed the neighborhood.
Bayberry bushes fed quail —
squirrels scolded beavers
for damming up the stream,
building mudstick houses,
and gnawing young bark.
But brook trout understood,
for there were seasons then,
a reason for sap to rise high
and spill out, sticky, wet.
Abundant honeybees
worked purple wildflowers.
The land's peace seemed willed.
But rains came, and stayed,
rotting the apple orchards,
flooding the fragrant fields.
The blue sky turned gray,
then black. Black rain,
killer rain. Acid rain.
Leather-booted loggers came.
On tractors, with skidders,
their dynamite flamed.
Big-bar chainsaws came,
chainsaws whining in rain.
Tall white pines were clearcut.
Wild, without cover,
or food or shade,
the animals fled.
Beavers were shot,
brook trout poisoned.
Deer were trophies.
A farm family sold the land,
sold it, in loss, to loggers.
It was ripped for lumber,
sold again to stone contractors.
Their trucks raised dust,
rust ate their machines:
Bulldozer, front-end loader,
boulder-mover bucket crane;
sifting stones from soil,
sand from silt, spitting pebbles;
gas-fired gravel-taker, undertaker:
quarry-maker.
The land lay raw
like football shoulders.
But the gravel contractors
scored a capital gain:
they sold for a profit
to a church camp.
The summer camp had endured it
and church clergy bought it.
If the adjacent quarry were bare
God was, nonetheless, there.
God made that deal —
no one else could.
Ice hugs rock.
Boulders, in sand craters,
eyeball the moon.
In the basin,
where snow drifts,
December wanting June,
is a seedling tree.
Not a hardwood, not oak,
not birch, not cherry,
not even poplar, not heavy,
half-buried under wet sand
is a white pine.
Only a seedling,
but deer won't eat it,
it's too sour, dry.
Winds won't move it,
its stringy roots
clutch bedrock.
Snow won't cover it.
It's too stubborn,
too thin, too spry.
Ice won't crack it.
Sand won't stop it.
It will thrive.
It will neutralize
sulphurous rains
and raise its needles
to the diamonds in the sky.
Its cones will drop
and multiply.
It will grow straight
in green stands
and smell fresh
and burn fat.
It will endure —
it promises that.
Children will come to it
in summer. Campsites
will follow them. Beds
of evergreen needles
are soft and necessary
like gifts, like dreams.
Animals will come to it
in winter. Evergreen
against the white snow
the tall white pine
will hang popcorn strings
for all hungry wildlife.
There will be a time
when glistening
below the icy moon
the pine in the quarry
will carol like a loon.
Brother trees will answer it.
Come that future,
when the frozen land
is grown up strong again
and death is not all
the quarry will call:
Christmas, Christmas.
| 
