Quarry Pile
Before my brother was born: a rockfall
we foraged. I remember onliness, quiet business,
the cascading at once imminent and stilled,
a bed cleared down a hillside. The sick seep
of milky weed, of summer and dust. Beryl,
quartz? We climbed apart to browse, brooding,
to cover maximum ground. I remember the scrape
and sound of grit in plastic pails, how the turning
of the littered specimens, mostly granite,
caught my hands in little cuts; the weight
numbed them hot.
So, my hands left me. This was
a temporary and natural biological defense.
I touched plants to ease them: they came back
stung. For every black leaping moth there must
have been garnet, for ground wasps amethyst—
but these resisted me. Apatite, tourmaline.
| Julia Leverone |
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