The Quarry

Porifera

Porifera Out on the deck, I pull up a chair and lounge, my feet up on the railing with my rocks: geodes and fossil sponges, local stones. I use them when I dry things on the railing. Early in April, early afternoon, my house is like a pleasant, slowly moving ship. I love the quiet here. Far away in the ballfield, nearly naked girls and boys pursue a lone frisbee, their bodies flashing in the primal sun. From where I sit, they fit beneath the legs of a daddy longlegs jerking along my railing— and now I think of it, both it and I live at the pleasure of my huge hackberry: three tons of life suspended overhead. A couple of squirrels helix up the oak tree; a rabbit stops to meditate, and chew; in the next yard, two frantic terriers feel they must answer an inquiring crow, while sprinklers, whirling, flood the air with jewels— So many symbols! but of what? Of life eager for life, I guess, even under a spider’s girth; life spending itself on itself, and being changed: their lives filled up, my sponges turned themselves stone. . . . Some afternoons, the backyard seems to turn: I feel the light dim, and the yard become the negative of itself. The tree-shadows 38 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. and bird-shadows fluttering on pale ground seem real trees and birds, while the ones above are froth, flashes of air. And then the sponges on my rail get heavy, the rail sags, and my house shows its age. The hackberry threatens to loose its giant limbs. Then I seem changed also, into the local genius of upper Clark Street. I suppose people before me have had the same illusion (this house has stood here for a century); no one remembers them—unless it’s they who dim the light and make the yard an unfamiliar landscape: as I may do for some new owner, decades on. 39 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. ...