The Quarry

Back to Nature

Back to Nature Then everyone who worked at a desk all day beneath the drone of fluorescence left their desks, and they all drove home in the gold light of evening, under the oaks and the sweep of elms, to lit kitchens, and gardens of onions, garlic, squash, and they pulled the onions gently out of the earth, and brushed away the black crumbs, sliced off the stems and threw them on the compost, while insects rose up, whirring, a flurry of summer snowflakes, as if knowing there was something wrong— and they crushed the garlic in oil and made a fantastic salad in a wooden bowl, and ate. Then the stars came out, and shone the brighter as the night grew late, and they slept, the husbands, wives, the children, each in their beds. They lay all night like guests in the still house, and dreamed there. 21 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. The stars burned in the dark, the garden brimmed with night, the onions rose in the black earth with the pungency of onions— perfect, sphere within sphere, and each sphere more secret; but in the inmost globe, annealed in onionskin like writing on a wall, the sleepers’ dreams were breathing—dreams from Russia, Poland, places old women gather onions. Why were the dreams so violent? Why did their inmost spaces throb with the sound of insects whirring, clapping their wings?— making a sound like elm trees whirling against the house. But the sun rose in the morning and the children rose from bed and ran to the garden, shouting— the onions had gotten bigger! They lay in the black earth steaming, and their green stems gleamed with dew. 22 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...